Good Deeds
by Ponytales
Summary: Everyone leaves someone behind. When Christine Johnson falls out of an anomaly three years later it's Lester's turn to try and clean up the mess he thought was dealt with. James/Christine eventually. Spoilers for series 1-4
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Primeval but I do adore the show!

Summery: Everyone leaves someone behind. When Christine Johnson falls out of an anomaly three years later it's Lester's turn to try and clean up the mess he thought was dealt with. James/Christine eventually

Rated Will be T eventually for some language and personal time.

A/N: This story is a stand-alone from all my other and was only supposed to be about ten pages long. I've no idea how it expanded to this...

Spoilers for season 1-4.

*****No good deed goes unpunished*****

James Lester was catching up on a veritable legion of paperwork when the anomaly alarms went whooping off and completely threw his attention off. There really didn't need to to be so loud did they? Surely an announcement over the speakers would suffice.

With a sigh he left his office and called out to Jess, "Where's it at?"

"It's a repeat," as the young lady rattled off the address the computer gave her Lester felt his blood run cold. "That's Christine Johnson's facility."

"That anomaly goes to the future ARC!" Connor blurted out. "We've got to get there!" He ran out of the operations floor, following Captain Becker who was only a step ahead of him.

"Let me know if something comes through-" Lester started to say to Jess when she hit her earpiece and told everyone, "We have an incursion."

"Damn." He felt like cursing. "Send the other teams as well. Those future Predators are nasty creatures. Make sure they don't escape the building."

Orders given, he tried and failed to focus on his paperwork.

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Half an hour later his phone started ringing. It was Captain Becker.

"Yes?" He snatched it up and snapped.

"It's locked, and a predator didn't come through, we found Christine Johnson passed out just on this side of it."

He knew those words but that sentence made no sense. "I beg your pardon?"

"Johnson." Becker repeated. "She alive. She's torn up pretty badly, the ambulance has already taken her away. She doesn't know how long she'd been gone."

Lester felt a panic rising in him, "You said she was passed out?"

Becker was a bit puzzled why his boss was trying to catch him out, "she regained conscience briefly when we moved her. She said that Helen shot the predator and she jumped back in the anomaly." He took a deep breath, "She thought it had been ten seconds. She didn't understand why Connor had a beard now."

"Oh no." Lester rocked his head back and felt the beginnings of a really nasty migraine building. He knew this was going to blow up in his face. That's what he got for being nice to a lonely old lady.

"Sir?" Becker was confused. "I realize you two didn't get on, but isn't her being alive a good thing?"

"Not for me it isn't." Lester snapped. "What hospital did they take her to?"

"St. Mary's." The head of security thought that it was very selfish of Lester to care more for his rivalry with the woman than for her life even if she was a power hungry, ambitious, backstabbing bitch.

"I'm heading over. Is the anomaly locked?"

"Yes sir."

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All the way over to St. Mary's Lester tried and failed to come up with some easy to believe lie he could tell her for the events of the past three years. Nothing came to mind. He felt like beating his head against the steering wheel. It all started with those damned lilies and his bad sense to attach his name to the damn card at her damn funeral. It was all her fault, as usual.

Putting it off wouldn't make it easier. He growled and shut off the engine. By the time he reached the information desk he was in full control of himself. He inquired after her and was given a room number by a polite young man in blue scrubs who checked quickly to see if anyone had thought to enact any privacy barriers on the information. No one had. Lester corrected that oversight and made a mental note to have Becker send someone to accompany anyone who needed to go to the hospital in the future.

This was rapidly falling in the category of putting it off and he never put things off. Not even difficult and unpleasant things like this. The elevator ride was too short for his liking but he got to her floor without any extra delay, until he got to the nurses station.

An older nurse with dark hair looked up at him. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for room 34B, please."

"The doctor is in there now. You'll have to wait." She nodded to some chairs set out in the hallway.

"Of course." Lester parked himself and tried to figure out how he would want his worst enemy to tell him that his only remaining parent had passed away more than a year ago. There wasn't an easy way to do it and the doctor taking his sweet time coming out wasn't helping him settle his nerves.

Eventually, he emerged and Lester rose to his feet. "How is she?" he asked, trying his best to play a concerned family member. "Who are you?" The doctor wasn't going to give private information away to just any bum sitting outside the room. "Family?"

"Yes. We're family. She's my step-sister. I'm the only family she has left." Lester lied smoothly.

"She was asking for her mum?"

"She passed away recently, Christy isn't taking it well."

The doctor nodded, "She has a concussion, that would explain the memory loss. The car crash caused a lot of contusions and blood loss. We've given her a transfusion and I just finished stitching her up. We'll be keeping her overnight for observation but she can go home tomorrow if someone stays with her for a few days."

Wonderful. "Can I see her?"

The doctor moved out of his way, "Of course. Stay as long as you like. Visiting hours don't end for immediate family."

Lester walked into the room. She looked up instantly when he entered, and her face fell when she saw it was only him. "What do you want? Come to gloat?" She rasped out. She sounded as if she had screamed herself hoarse.

He took a second to survey her. Her whole face was swollen, like it had been bashed into the ground and there was several lines of stitches trailing along her arms to disappear underneath the pale gray hospital gown. Her hair was wet, like they had washed it to get the blood out and another line of stitches crossed her forehead all the way around to below her ear.

Lester realized that he just had to get this over with. "I didn't come to gloat. I came to tell you that we thought you were dead."

She scoffed. "I was gone less than a minute. I already told Becker, Helen shot the creature and I jumped back in while it was closing."

"No." He pulled a chair over beside the bed. "You were gone three years."

"No." She denied that immediately, "I couldn't have. You're lying to me."

"I'm not lying to you, you were gone three years. You were declared dead-"

"Oh no, give me your phone, I've got to call my mum and tell her I'm in the hospital-" She saw the look on his face and froze. This was why he came.

"Christine, I'm so sorry, she's gone."

"What do you mean she's gone? She can't be gone. I talked to her this morning..." Her voice trailed off as she read the sorrow in his face. They went way back. Nearly two decades. She knew when he was lying, and the one time he should be, he wasn't.

"I'm sorry, so sorry." Awkwardly, he patted her hand as she crumpled into tears. "Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit?"

"I don't know." She gasped out. "I don't know."

So he stayed, patting her hand and feeling supremely uncomfortable while she grieved. Eventually, she pulled herself together and he passed her his handkerchief.

"There's more." He said while she wiped her eyes. She issued a bitter laugh.

"Of course there's more. What?" This was the worst part. He decided to just begin at the beginning and let her find out for herself that he totally did not intend for everything to happen. He sighed and started to explain.

"I sent flowers to your funeral. Your mum rang me to thank me for it."

"That was mum, always polite. I expect she sent you a little card also?"

"Yes. She did. We had a nice chat and she was having some trouble with the office getting your death benefits. I helped her out a little and I told her if she needed anything else not to hesitate to call." He recalled how surprised he had been that such a lovely woman managed to raise such a conniving daughter.

Christine smiled through her grief, "You shouldn't have said that."

He smiled ruefully, "Yes, I figured that out rather quickly, but I couldn't really say no to her. She was the epitome of a feisty old lady, but she needed help with some things."

She was quite suspicious. "Like what?"

"Like getting your manky incontinent cat to the vet when he was ill. I have a scar on my hand from the grumpy bastard." James held his right hand up and showed her the faint line down the back of it.

She was so surprised she laughed through her tears. "I'm dead. This is a parallel universe. There's no way you helped my mum take my cat to the vet."

"That beast had to weigh a stone. She couldn't exactly carry him. She couldn't even get him into the carrier. I had to throw a towel on the creature and shove him in."

Lester frowned as he remembered it, crouched down under a table armed only with a pink towel with little roses embroidered on it facing down the angry, vicious monster that was making the appropriate noises for a horror movie soundtrack. He had been tempted to summon Captain Becker or Abby to subdue the creature, but that would mean the rest of it getting out.

"Who's got him now? If mum's gone?" Her lip trembled a little.

"He's gone too. He passed away peacefully, in his sleep about two years ago."

"My cat's dead too then? What about my horse?"

"That fat pony you call a horse is alive and well and just where you left him. Your mum kept him at that stable."

"Until she died." Her practical mind corrected him, "They wouldn't have kept him after no one was paying the board for him."

Lester kept silent and looked at the ground and she looked at his guilty pose for a minute before saying, "I've been struck in the head. They said I had a concussion. Are you really not telling me that you have been paying for my horse?"

"He's not a horse. He's an obese pony with a nasty carrot addiction. Anyway, she left him to me and I never got around to calling the knacker man."

"My mum left you my horse? I think I'm dreaming. These pain drugs are really kicking in."

"It's complicated." Lester noticed how her eyes were starting to unfocus, "You've had a lot of shocks today. Why don't you rest? I'll be around to talk to you tomorrow." He didn't give her a chance to protest before he rose and left the room.

This was going to get more awkward tomorrow. He just knew it. On his way home he thought about taking Mrs. Johnson out to that stable to visit the 'horse' for the first time.

When she explained that Christine had a horse Lester expected it to be some poncy thoroughbred or warmblood with a five digit price tag. He hadn't expected them to walk right past the pens with the fine examples of refined breeding to a small pasture on the edge of the property.

"Where's the horse?" He asked her as a few muddy ponies come up and started to nosing about for treats. "That's him, that's Star." Mrs. Johnson had pointed out the dirtiest one, also the pushiest.

James was extremely skeptical. "That's Christine's horse?"

Mrs. Johnson spun her walker around so she could sit on it while she explained. "Her father got him for her when she was a child. I think he was five or six then, of course ponies live a long time. He's...let's see...thirty two? He may be thirty three. I'd have to look at his papers. She showed him in pony club until she was too big for him."

Lester took a good look at the pony. He was just a little scrubby pony that the Christine Johnson he knew probably wouldn't bother to pat as she walked by. But this little pathetic example of a pony had been hers for most of her life. Who knew?

"Do they ever clean him up?"

"Every few days they catch him and the others and give them a good scrubbing down." Mrs. Johnson explained. "We would come out here once a month or so together and feed him carrots. Christine would brush him off or bath him. She was so busy with work she didn't really have time here lately." Her voice got a bit wistful at the end, at the time they lost together.

James didn't tell her that her daughter had been occupied trying to get him sacked. It would only make her feel bad.

That had been the beginning of the end. Between prying the cat into the carrier and transporting him to the vet and driving an old lady out to visit with her daughters pony he became entirely too involved in Mrs. Johnson's life. But she didn't have anyone else to care. He felt badly for her. His own parents had an army of children and grandchildren to look after them in their later years but Mrs. Johnson was totally alone. He thought a few acts of attention and kindness wouldn't hurt anything. That was until Christine came back from the dead.

Tomorrow was going to be even more awkward than today.

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The next day Christine woke up in the hospital with a memory that made absolutely no sense at all. She tried to chalk it up to a bad drug interaction, but the crumpled handkerchief on the bedside table wouldn't let her.

It was mid morning before Lester skulked back into her hospital room.

"I had the oddest lucid hallucination last night." She said without preamble, pinning him with a stare, "and my mum's number has been disconnected."

"Yes. It wasn't a hallucination." Lester sat down where he had been the night before. "I'm sorry."

"She's really gone then?"

"Yes."

The doctor coming in with a nurse trailing behind him cut off their conversation. "Mrs. Johnson, good morning. How are you feeling?"

She hated perky people. "Sore, and my stitches hurt."

He made a note in the chart, "We'll send you home with a prescription for some drugs, I notice you're allergic to most things so watch for any side effects on this one. Now, is someone available to stay with you for a few days? I can't send you home if you'll be alone."

Christine lied to him, "Yes, I have someone. When can I leave?"

"There's no set check-out time, I can have the nurse bring you some paperwork and you can leave whenever you feel ready."

"Wonderful." She said dryly. With a few more perky comments about how she'd be right as rain in a week or two, the doctor left.

"So who's staying with you? And where are you staying?" Lester asked her as soon as the door shut behind him.

"I expect I'll get a cab to a hotel. Why are you still here?" She snapped at him, supremely annoyed.

"With what money?" He countered. "That's what I didn't get a chance to finish telling you last night."

"My accounts are closed? My bank card?" She leaned back and considered the implications, "I've got no money at all?"

"No. Your mum donated most of your stuff to charity or sold it."

"What happened to her estate when she died?"

"She left it to me."

Christine gawped at him and thought that he had never before managed to truly shock her, "I beg your pardon?" She looked all about the room like the answers would be written on the walls, "Why on earth would she do that?"

"I told you, I sent flowers at your funeral and she needed help. She was lonely and rang me about once a week just to chat. Then that beast got sick and I helped her take him to the vet, and she wanted to go visit your fat pony-"

"I'm not hearing this! This isn't happening!" She burst out. "You...were friends...with my mum!"

"She didn't have anyone Christine." He snapped at her. "Your mum was a sweet lady and she was grieving and I couldn't kick her to the curb." He tried to explain. There was no explaining. He had just had to get through this.

"When she passed away I found out she'd changed her will to leave me the largest portion of her estate." It was quite a chunk of money, "It's all tied up in investments now. It's yours, since you obviously aren't dead, but I can't get it out of the investments without the bulk of it going to early withdrawal penalties and taxes."

Christine closed her eyes and counted to ten. "So to sum up, you're telling me, I have no money, no resources, no home, and everything I and my mother had now belongs to you, my biggest rival?"

He thought about it, "Yes. That's accurate. I'll give it back, you are her daughter but if I do then the government is going to take most of it."

"Early withdrawal penalties. Right." Lester watched her rub her face tiredly.

She made a quick decision. "Fine then. I'm staying at your place."

Now it was his turn to gasp. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard the doctor. I can't be alone for a few days. I can't hardly walk and unfortunately I do have bad reactions to drugs. You have everything that was mine, so I don't see why I should stay in a hotel if you have to pay the bill when I can stay at your flat. I know you have one with a second bedroom."

"I- what- how do you know I have an extra bedroom?" He demanded, as he couldn't really argue her other points. "I could put you up in a very nice hotel and hire a nurse to stay with you."

"I hate nurses. They're too fussy. I don't expect you to hover over me. I just need a place to stay while we get this sorted."

"Back to the second bedroom question..."

She laughed, "Please. You are not the cramped one bedroom type."

He groaned and thought about the last time someone stayed with him. "I know I'm going to regret this."At least this one didn't bring pets. Scratch that, this one did but technically, he owned her pony. Did that make it better or worse?

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Back at the ARC Abby's phone rang. It was Lester. She had seen him come in this morning, but he only gathered some files up and left again. He had seemed to be in a very bad mood, worse than usual, and she had steered clear of him for the hour or so he was around.

"Hello?"

"Abby, I need a favor." He said. "I can't get into it now. Can you get away?"

"Yeah. What's going on?

"I need you to buy some things for me."

"Okay? Why? Are these legal things?"

"Of course they're legal things." He snapped, "Listen, this whole Christine Johnson situation has gotten very complicated."

"Yeah, Becker told me you sounded upset she wasn't dead. What's up with that? Hasn't the poor woman been though enough?" Abby lectured him.

"Abby you have no idea. Can you go buy her some clothes? The hospital threw away the ones she had and since she was declared dead," He hissed into the phone, "something you should be able to relate to," he had to play the trump card, "she hasn't got anything else."

"Of course. What's her size?" Abby perked up immediately at the thought of a shopping trip on the offices' dime.

"I haven't the foggiest. You'll have to phone the hospital. She's in room 34 B on the sixth floor. I'll meet you at the mall on fifth to give you some money. Don't bring Connor. Don't even tell Connor either."

"All right, I'll be there in a bit." She grabbed her purse and headed out.

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Lester was sitting right where he told her he would be, on the bench outside the south side entrance. He jumped up when he saw her. "There you are."

"Got here as quick as I could." She told him cheerfully, "we had a nice chat on the phone. It's so generous of you to let her stay with you while she recovers." She actually gave him a hug.

Lester went pale. "What else did she tell you?"

"Just that." Abby shrugged, "The doctors told her she shouldn't be alone for a few days and you volunteered your flat, like when Connor needed a place for a few days."

"Please Abby, don't let this get out. I have my reputation to think about." He looked panicked. She didn't understand why he didn't want people to know he was a nice person, underneath all the gruff and grumpiness.

"Your secret's safe with me." She crossed her heart with her hand while he dug through his wallet and to her shock passed her his personal visa credit card. She thought he would give her expense account cash or something.

"The pin number is 8472, don't go crazy." He said a bit desperately, "I've got to get to a meeting with my lawyer but I'll be back to pick her up around one so don't take all day either."

"I won't." Abby grinned at him, "I'll see you there."

The mall and someone else's money! If only it wasn't her boss she might have had a lot more fun. With a sigh she consulted the list Christine had given her of sizes and got started.

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Lester dashed into his lawyers office with a bare minute to spare. The bloodsucker charged the same whether he was there or not. "Well? Is there a way out?"

"Nope." The older man told him succinctly. "The mother left you the money legally. You invested it legally. There's no way to give it to the daughter even if you didn't know she was alive and out of the country."

Lester leaned back and buried his hands in his head. "Can I at least transfer the appropriate amount into her name?"

"Nope. Changing anything gets a penalty. The only exception would be if you married her, then she would be entitled to half-"

"Absolutely not! I detest her. How Mrs. Johnson managed to raised such a vindictive conniving woman is beyond me." Too worked up to sit he started to pace around the office. His lawyer who had known him since university and had never seen him this flustered couldn't keep the amusement out of his voice as he gave into curiosity.

"If you loath her so much why are you so concerned about giving her part of her mothers estate?"

Lester waved his hands about helplessly, "It's what she would have wanted."

He couldn't explain that a sweet old lady's wishes were important to him. He couldn't even explain to himself why it was important that Johnson get her proper inheritance. He didn't even like the woman.

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Abby walked into the hospital room laden down with bags. "I got everything on your list."

"Thank you." Christine pushed the lunch tray she had been picking at away from her and started looking through the bags. "Did you bankrupt James?"

The younger woman giggled. "No. But he told me not to go overboard." Abby took a moment to examine Christine while she was distracted by the clothes.

She had seen her yesterday, bloody and collapsed in a heap next to the anomaly. Today she was very pale but only the thin lines of stitches and some bruising along her arms and face gave notice that she was actually pretty seriously injured.

Christine quickly made a pile of clothes and swung her legs out of the bed. She eased out and Abby grabbed her as she nearly fell. "Careful there." Abby kept a firm hand around her waist as she helped her walk slowly to the bathroom. "You all right in here?" She asked worriedly.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." Her hand clutching the railing by the sink belied that statement but Abby didn't want to push it. "Let me get your clothes." Abby grabbed up the pile that Christine had made and set it in the bathroom. "I'll be right outside if you need help."

"Thank you."

Abby was sitting in the chair waiting on Christine when Lester arrived, looking flustered. His eyes zeroed in on the bags on the bed. "Good grief, I thought you were going to get her something to wear out of here, not a whole new wardrobe."

She rolled her eyes and brushed it off, "She's going to need clothes for tomorrow also, and some pajamas and underwear and socks and shampoo-" Lester waved at her to stop. "Fine, fine." Abby gave him his card back. "I better be getting back to work. You two kids have fun." She shot him a humorous glance as she walked out.

Christine struggled into a long black skirt and short sleeve button up shirt while Abby and Lester bantered back and forth outside. The fabric dragging over her stitches made her gasp and bite her lip. There were more slices on her legs and torso that the others couldn't see, not to mention the bruises from that creature tossing her about before Helen killed it.

Thoughtfully Abby had selected things that fastened in the front. Christine emerged from the bathroom to find Lester busy texting someone on his blackberry and a nurse waiting with a wheelchair.

"No." Christine said firmly. "I'm not being wheeled out of here."

"Hospital policy. I push you or he pushes you. We can't have you falling down." The nurse was not put off by her brisk manner.

She started to argue again and Lester cut her off, "Christine, get in the damn chair. I've already missed nearly a whole day of work because of you." She thought seriously about arguing with both of them, but her legs were starting to tremble and the dizziness never really subsided. Maybe the nurse had a point.

"Fine." She snapped and sat down in the chair. "Bring the bags." She ordered regally and was pleased to hear what could be his teeth grinding behind her when they left.

She didn't say much on the way back to his place and thankfully she was able to walk up to the apartment. When Connor stayed here Lester had to resort to notes everywhere to keep the place habitable. For some reason he didn't think he would need to do that with Christine. If he was lucky she would stay in the second bedroom and as soon as he could get convince her bosses to approve some back pay, she could be out of his hair.

"This is it." He announced. "Your room is down this way." Lester refused to give her a tour. If she couldn't work out where the kitchen was and so on then she would just have to cope. He dropped the bags he was carrying on the bed of the guest room.

Amused, she stood in the doorway and surveyed the room. It was about as personal as a hotel room. It was decorated tastefully in neutral colors and a had a few nice pictures hung on the walls. There was a wooden dresser opposite the king size bed with a television on top. It looked exactly like a hotel room.

"Well, I'll leave you to it." He brushed past her to leave.

"Wait." She dug through the bag of paperwork from the hospital.

"What? If you expect me to bring you dinner in bed then think again."

"Not that, my prescriptions. Will you get them filled- since I don't exactly have any money...or a car...or a legal existence..."

"Fine. I get the point." He plucked the papers out of her hand and left. "My whole day is ruined." Christine listened to him complain on his way back out of the flat.

Once he was gone she sat down and took a good long around what was going to be her home for a the next little while. She stretched out on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. Thoughts of her mother and her stupid mean cat filled her mind and she started to sob.

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**A/N** I'm going some interesting places with this story. I haven't seen any on the 'net that force these two mortal enemies to get along. If you like it please review.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A/N: This chapter sets up the action and explains a few things

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Back at the ARC Connor cornered Abby, "What's going on?" He asked her bluntly, "I was looking for you, you weren't answering your phone and Becker said you took off all afternoon."

"Um...I had some shopping to do." She tried to brush him off. He was unbrushable. "Abby!" Connor looked at her with his puppy dog eyes, eyes that had gotten quite a bit firmer with her since their time in the Cretaceous. The time she could walk all over him was long gone.

"I've been sworn to secrecy." He raised an eyebrow at her. He had ways of making her talk. A glance around proved that they were alone in her creature lab. He eased up to her stealthily. She watched him out of the corner of her eye and wasn't at all surprised when he grabbed her and kissed her deeply.

"This isn't going to work," She gasped out once she could breath again. "I bet it is." He whispered before bending down again. Three very thorough kisses later proved him right. She folded. "I met Lester at the mall and had to buy some clothes for Johnson. He was too embarrassed to be seen buying bras," she jabbed her finger into his chest, "and don't tell anyone."

"What?"

"She's staying with him until they got the whole she's dead thing sorted. He doesn't want anyone to know."

Connor laughed, "But they hate each other. Are you serious?"

"I don't know, I didn't ask. She was tripping off her mind on pain meds and he was already pissed and flustered. I only spoke to him for a minute."

"That is interesting." Connor remembered back when **he** stayed with Lester. That man was prickly, fussy and a neat freak. He had been grateful at the time that he didn't have to crash at the office but Johnson got under his skin faster than anyone Connor had ever seen. Lester went red in the face at the sight of her. Becker said he was pissed she was even alive!

Abby warned him again, "You'd better not tell anyone. I have a plan."

"What plan?" Connor loosely kept his hands resting on her waist. "Are you plotting something?"

"Yes actually, I feel bad for her. I'm going to be nice to her. Maybe if we're friends then when she gets her job back and all that she won't try so hard to get all of us sacked."

"How devious. So you're going to make her your friend?"

"Yeah. If I can be make nice to Caroline," Connor winced at the reminder of his x-girlfriend, "then I can make nice to Christine."

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Lester took the time while the pharmacy was filling the prescription to get some groceries. He didn't have much in the flat and he was positive that that woman wasn't going to want to subsist on take away. But he wasn't cooking for her. She could cook for herself. Or heat things up for herself.

This was getting more and more complicated.

When he got back to the flat he didn't hear anything. He carried the groceries in and put them away still with no sign of that woman. With a sigh he picked up the pill bottles and walked down the hall.

The door was still open, and he could see her laying on the bed asleep. She hadn't changed, or looked as if she had moved since he left. He could see the bruises and more stitches on her legs that he hadn't noticed before. She actually looked friendly when she was asleep. Friendly and battered. They would not be going out in public together for some time. That's all he needed, someone to try and haul her off to a battered woman's shelter. She'd probably embarrass him horribly if she had the chance.

He left the medicine bottles on the bedside table where she would see them and set about trying to pry some money loose for her. Why oh why had he decided to be helpful to her mother? It was so unlike him! It didn't seem like much, getting her some phone numbers and names of a family advocate. How did it end in this?

Two hours later he tossed his phone down completely frustrated. He had hoped than when he got clearance for Abby and Connor to collect back pay for the year they were gone it would set a precedent for anomaly-lost personnel.

Not according to her office. He went all the way to the minister. They weren't springing for a dime. His lawyer confirmed again that there wasn't any way to break any of his investments for at least ten years without paying huge penalties. Loosing seventy percent of the money wasn't something he thought she would want to do.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to figure out what to do next.

"Tell me what happened to my mum."

James looked up, "I didn't hear you get up." She was standing in the doorway and he could see she had been crying, "Did you find those antibiotics?"

"Yes." She walked into his study and sat down on the couch. "What happened?"

"She had a heart attack, in her sleep. Her home nurse found her the next morning. The doctor said it was painless."

"Painless. How did you get so close to my mother?"

"I told you, I sent lilies to the funeral." He pulled his glasses off and set them on the desk. "She rang me to thank me for it, and she needed help getting your benefits from the office. I helped her out."

Christine's eyes narrowed. "I'm allergic to lilies. They make me sneeze."

James grinned at her. "I know. It seemed slightly inappropriate somehow but I did it anyway." Her expression of pure aggravation convinced him to move on with the explanation.

"Then she called me, upset and worried that your cat was going to die in the sitting room. Awful thing was sicking up everywhere. She couldn't get the horrid beast in the carrier and even if she could, she couldn't carry it on the bus along with her walker."

Christine hugged herself, "So you went to the vet once with her."

"I went to the vet very often with her." James corrected her, "Dr. Harrison and I were nearly on a first name basis. It's a miracle that beast lived as long as he did with as many chronic conditions that he had."

"I can't believe that. I just can't believe that."

"Believe it. It's why she left me most of her money. Here's a copy of the will." He walked around his desk and handed it to her. "I thought you might want to read it. My lawyer has already been through it. It's totally legal. I can't give you what she left me just because we thought you were dead."

She thought about asking why he couldn't have just parked it in savings like a normal person but he wasn't a normal person. Low risk, long term investments for maximum return were completely his style. "How much?"

"After the house was sold and all the savings she had, combined with what she got from your insurance, almost three hundred thousand pounds."

"I still feel like I talked to her yesterday morning."

Oh hell. Lester sat down beside her, "I'm so sorry. Don't you have any friends you would like to tell that you're still alive?"

He took in the rueful look on her face, "No. I'm not really a people person. My mum was about the only one that would have missed me." She looked at him, "Just how many people came to my funeral?"

"I don't know. I didn't actually attend, I only sent flowers." Lester tried to deflect where this conversation was going. It wasn't working. "She would have told you at some point. I mean, she left you my horse!"

He didn't see any point in lying to her. "Not many people came. She was upset about that, I told her what you did was so classified that most of your colleagues weren't allowed to attend. I told her they couldn't gather in an unsecured area in a large group." What a complete lie. "I told her that they had small service at the office for you."

He shrugged. "She believed it. It gave her some comfort."

"Better then knowing her daughter didn't have any friends."

Lester reached out and rubbed her shoulder. He really didn't know what to say and the traditional 'there there' seemed superfluous somehow. She leaned into the contact. His own parents had been gone for nearly a decade and he knew exactly how she felt. He was dreading what he could see coming and there wasn't a way around it. This would be as bad as living with Connor.

She buried her face in her hands and tried not to start crying again. "I've absolutely wasted my life. I've got no family, no friends, nobody to care-"

He couldn't take it anymore. A sobbing female was a weakness even he couldn't stand. "Come here." James hugged her and tried desperately to get her to stop crying. "Look, I'll make some tea and we'll get this sorted out somehow."

She wiped away her tears with his handkerchief again, "Thank you."

He escaped into the kitchen. Thank heaven for tea. She joined him a few minutes later with what he thought of as her 'work' expression fixed on her face, still with the file in her hand.

She sat down at the bar and started to read her mother's will while he got out two cups and dropped a teabag down into each of them. James left her alone while she was reading. It wasn't a long will. Some to charity, most to him.

"I've got a bit of practice bringing people back from the dead now," He tried to joke. "It still took me more than a month to get Connor and Abby sorted out."

"What do you mean?" With a jolt he realized she didn't know they were lost in time while they chased Helen Cutter. "Well..." He explained the situation to her while the water boiled. People didn't realize all the little minute details that made up a life. Credit report, bank statements, utilities, car note, pay stubs, drivers license, tax returns, the list was nearly endless.

"What else has been going on in the ARC?"

Lester didn't see any reason not to catch her up to speed. As the minister pointed out, anything to do with the anomalies was his department. Anyone that fell out of an anomaly was his problem. He was being paid to resolve problems ergo, Christine Johnson was now completely his problem. The whole history with her mum was just extra drama that if he was extremely fortunate no one would ever need to know about.

He let her know about all the major changes, and breakthroughs but when he got to the part about being partially funded by a private corporation her ears perked up. "Is it all still secret?"

"Yes, surprisingly. Although I can't say I'm very fond of my equivalent counterpart in the private sector."

Her eyes danced with amusement, "Now you're the liaison!"

"It's horrible. Nearly as painful as working around you with was. I know he's up to something. Burton is just too slick-"

Christine sat straight up on the bar stool and nearly dropped her teacup. "Did you say Burton? Phillip Burton? About so tall," she waved her hand, "and black hair? Our age?"

James was a bit taken back, "Yes. I suppose you know him?"

"He was a conniving little weasel." She said viciously.

"So all you conniving little weasels know each other?" His slight smile took the sting out of the words. Heaven knew he'd said much worse to her.

She shot him a baleful look. "I sacked him." Now he was interested.

"Really? Do tell."

"I trained him. He was one of my assistants about ten-" she corrected herself, "thirteen years ago. I was positive he was spying for someone but I couldn't prove it."

"If you couldn't prove it then how did you sack him?"

"Combined his job with someone with more seniority." She smiled just thinking about it, "So sorry, your services were no longer needed. So now he works for the corporation that owns half of the ARC?"

"They don't own it per say but they do pay half the bills and they get first dibs on any commercial applications that come out of it." James sighed and looked down at his cup. "Unfortunately I can't do that to get rid of him."

"So Burton has weaseled his way into the ARC. Pity."

"I've more bad news. I spoke to your former bosses over at the Agency. They spun some sob story about cost cutting and downsizing and the sum of it is that they have no intention of hiring you back."

She looked shocked for a moment, then her normal calm and collected expression took over. "I haven't got a job?"

"No."

"What am I supposed to do?" She asked before thinking.

He shrugged. "Find another one I suppose. Which is going to hard considering the level you perform at is highly classified and the whole government is going through downsizing. Not to mention a three year gap in your employment history."

"Damn."

"I'd offer you something at the ARC but alas, there's no place for someone of your particular talents." He lamented unconvincingly.

"You mean I'd be running the place inside a month." She shot back.

He surprised her by agreeing with her. "Yes, you probably would. More tea? We actually have to discuss our situation."

"Do you have anything stronger?"

She could see she had surprised him, "Oh come on, you know I drink. I've seen you drink often enough at parties."

"It's not that, I was only wondering if you should combine alcohol with pain killer and antibiotics. It seems that could end badly."

"One glass of wine won't hurt and I have the feeling I'm going to need it."

She could see that he still didn't quite believe her but he retrieved a very nice red wine out of a cabinet size wine cellar that was hidden under the bar.

"If you're certain?"

"Just pour."

"It has to breath first, heathen."

"Fine then, prissy pants. Let it breath."

Putting it off wouldn't make it any easier. Lester decided to sum up the situation. "I owe you about three hundred thousand pounds. I can't give it to you for at least ten years. I've got a bit of money in savings, I could give you a check for ten thousand and we could take that off the total I owe you."

"Ten thousand. You expect me to rebuild my life with ten thousand?"

"No. But it would get you a car and pay the bills for a few months while you looked for a job."

"How much are we talking about in taxes and early withdrawal penalties?"

"My accountant says roughly seventy percent. It could be as high as ninety depending on the gains."

She almost went pale, "Damn. That's horrible."

"Yes."

"Did you keep anything at all of my mothers?"

Lester sighed, "Her photo albums. I kept those, I don't know why, and her jewelry. I've got her engagement and wedding ring. That was about all."

Christine looked as if she was going to tear up again. "Where is it?"

"At my home. I keep a small place in the country for the weekends and holidays. It's there."

"When are you going back?"

"Friday night." By the set of her jaw he knew she would insist on going with him. This was worse than living with Connor, he was going to have no privacy at all.

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The next day found him in his office trying to keep on top of paperwork that absolutely had to be completed and working on restoring Christine's legal life. It was harder than with Connor and Abby. Those two had never been actually declared dead, just missing beyond a vast governmental wall that was equal parts classified, state secret and highly confidential.

It helped that Connor had no family and Abby's brother already knew what she did. He was wrapped up in so many disclosure forms if he ever breathed a word to anyone little brother Jack would be spending the rest of his life in a secret prison.

Halfway through the morning he realized that he might have a solution to the job problem. He waited on Burton to pop in unannounced, as was his annoying habit. One of his many annoying habits.

He didn't even make it to lunch before Burton casually walked in.

He opened with the obvious titillating gossip. "I hear Christine Johnson fell out of an anomaly yesterday."

"You heard correctly. She was badly hurt by that Predator. Do you know her well?" There was nothing like having both sides of the story for some interesting dinner conversation.

Surprisingly, Burton denied it. "No. I've heard her name mentioned as someone who can get things done, but I've never met her."

That was intriguing. Lester made a split decision that in hindsight would effect the rest of his life. He chose to focus on why Burton lied to him instead of why Christine sacked him.

"She did have quite a reputation." He left that one open ended and waited to see where Burton was going.

"Yes. Very formidable. Is she still in the hospital?"

"No, they discharged her, with a concussion and assorted other injuries." Lester tried to sound bored while relaying this information.

"Interesting." Burton stroked his chin in a manner he probably thought make him look wise and thoughtful but in reality it just looked pretentious. "Where is she staying? A mate's house?"

"If you can believe it or not-" Lester pulled off his glasses and sighed, "My second bedroom."

An expression of extreme panic crossed his face for the barest instant. If Lester hadn't been watching closely for a reaction then he wouldn't have seen it as Burton's usual complete calm took over again.

"Why?" He said, probably in an effort to get himself under control, "I was under the impression that you two loathed each other?"

"We did and we do. It's a matter of national security." Lester cast about frantically for an excuse without betraying anything on his face.

"What?"

"Between the concussion and all the lacerations the doctors put her on some pretty powerful pain killers. Johnson's one of those unfortunate people that gets a bit gabby when under the influence of medication." He lowered his voice slightly, "Imagine what a disaster it would be if she wandered into a hotel restaurant and started chatting up the waitresses about dinosaurs and anomalies."

Burton tapped his finger on his chin a few times, "Yes, that is a matter of national security. Why you? Why couldn't you just stash her somewhere?"

"She's not the type to tolerate being 'stashed' and believe me I tried. She flat out refused to stay in a hotel with a nurse. She actually wanted to stay here to recuperate and I wouldn't let her. I don't like her or trust her but if she's at my place I can at least keep an eye on her."

"Ahh..." Burton acted like he understood that logic.

Lester decided to push the other button. "Besides, she hasn't got any money. When she was declared dead her estate went to her mum. Then her mum passed away and donated her estate to charity."

"What about back pay? I have a very clear memory of signing a years worth of salary over to Abby and Connor." He still shuddered at the amount of those two checks.

"She worked for the Agency, not the home office. I've already spoken to them and they aren't going for it."

Carefully, carefully set the trap.

"They don't want her back either, they have a hiring freeze on."

Burton perked up, "So she's unemployed?"

"At the moment.. I expect she'll find something, hopefully quickly."

Lester started silently counting while he watched Burton think. He was up to seven when the other man spoke again, "I may have an opening in my organization. I'll have to interview her of course."

"Of course." Lester sounded relieved. "If you hire her then it greatly simplifies my job. If she gabs about things here it doesn't matter. Not to mention as soon as she's getting a check she can get out of my hair."

"You could always loan her some money." Burton suggested with a slight smile. Lester sneered. "Please." Burton laughed and got up to leave. He paused at the door and acted as if he had just realized something, "Oh James, please don't mention me to her by name. I don't know what she's heard about me and I don't want to prejudice her against me."

"All right. I won't. When do you want her for an interview?"

Burton thought about it. "Next Monday? How badly was she hurt? Is that too soon for her to be up and about?"

"She's up and about now, she just can't be around people without at least a level three clearance. Believe me if she wasn't that self sufficient I would have left her in the hospital with government nurses."

Burton laughed again on his way out.

This was an interesting development. Why would he lie about knowing her and then not want her to know about him? Curiouser and curiouser.

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While James was verbally sparring with Burton, Christine was exploring his flat. There wasn't all that much more to see. There was a stunning view of London out the living room windows, that was about the only noteworthy feature. She had already seen most of it and a few minutes of poking around only found a nearly empty hall closet, laundry closet and his bedroom down the hall from hers. The last she did not investigate.

She fell back on her training and searched all the best places to plant bugs and cameras, just for something to do. Heaven knew it was easy enough to spy on someone in this day and age. All she discovered was that there was a hair precariously balanced on his bedroom doorknob that was invitingly left just almost open enough for her to pass.

It seems that James didn't trust her. That wasn't a surprise.

After her brief walk about she stood in his study again and decided that either James was a bigger minimalist than she thought or this was a corporate apartment that he had commandeered for his personal use. It was decorated just so with impeccable taste and a perfectly matching color scheme. If it was his then it was professionally done and he hadn't bothered to add hardly any personal touches. Or he was batting for the other team. No straight man could coordinate this well.

She settled into the office and flipped the telly onto the news and turned on his computer. She was a bit shocked when it booted up to a screen showing two possible users to chose from. Her eyes narrowed when she saw he had named the second one, 'Nosy Christine'. She clicked on it and wasn't surprised at all to find that there wasn't a password set yet.

Christine settled in to catch up on the world over the last three years.

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That evening James came home and didn't see Christine anywhere, but he did hear a telly. He dropped his briefcase on the bar and went looking for her, eager to get her take on Burton's bizarre behavior.

She was in her room, asleep on her stomach, with the tv on one of the twenty four hour news programs. At some point she had changed into some light blue pajamas that Abby had bought for her. They looked like silk. They could very well be silk, he hadn't had time to check the charges on his card. Truth be told, he was a little afraid.

Between the clothes and her hair across her face she looked like a normal pretty woman. It had been quite a while since a pretty woman slept in his flat. He jerked himself away from that train of thought as soon as he realized he was on it. James picked up the remote from beside her and clicked the tv off before backing quietly out of the room. He pulled the door shut behind him.

He had plenty to do until she woke up anyway.

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Hours later Christine woke up slowly, feeling very comfortable in her new pajamas. The silence bothered her until she spotted the remote on the bedside table, instead of near her hand. 'James must be home,' she thought. The closed door confirmed it, he had been in here. She only hoped she hadn't been snoring or dribbling when he came in.

It only took a few minutes to change back into regular clothes and run a brush through her hair before walking out of the room. A wonderful smell hit her nose as soon as she entered the kitchen.

"What is that?"

"Lasagna, in the oven. It won't be ready for another ten minutes." He had obviously been home for a while. She took in his tie-less, partially unbuttoned shirt and feet clad only in socks. It a casual side of him that she had never thought she would see, or even think about. "I never pictured you knowing how to cook."

"I'm an expert." He held up the box the frozen lasagna had come out of. "How are you feeling?" The bruises on her face were getting brown and a bit blue around the edges. He moved in closer for a better look, "Isn't there some cream you can put on that?"

"Not that anyone's ever told me about. I've been dizzy all day."

He actually looked concerned, "How dizzy?"

She brushed it off as she put the kettle on for some tea. "It's a side effect of the antibiotics and the knock to the head. Believe me if dizziness is the only side effect I have then I'm doing well."

That brought his attention back to that morning, "Something interesting happened at work today. Burton lied to me. He said he had never met you."

James watched the surprise skitter across her face. "Why?"

"That's what I want to know. He's up to something. I've always had a bad feeling about him. I maneuvered him around to offering you a job." Now he got to watch her jaw drop. "Why? I told you that I sacked him! I'm not going to work for him!" She sputtered angrily. "He's a sniveling little weasel."

"Yes he is, and yes you are." James smoothly countered her complaining, "I have a proposition for you. You help me get rid of him and I'll hire you to work in the ARC." That got her attention. In fact, she nearly dropped her cup.

"You hate him that much?" She knew how much he disliked her.

"He's going to get my people killed."

"I got people killed," she pointed out, "I got a lot of people killed. It wasn't exactly safe poking around in the future ARC."

"Why were you doing that, by the way?"

She shrugged. "We had to figure out what caused it all."

"Well, keeping them alive by any means necessary would be clearly enumerated in whatever job description I make up for you." He was perfectly clear on that point. Christine actually considered it for a few seconds but it wasn't like she was likely to have a better offer.

"Tell me exactly what he said." She requested. Grateful that she was going along with this plan, he recounted the conversation exactly and it ended with her looking very worried, an expression he had never seen on her before.

"You're right. The little weasel is up to something. He lied to you before he knew I was staying here and he was much too interested in exactly where I was for my comfort. I'll convince him to hire me, did you have to tell him I can't shut up on pain killers?"

James tried to defend himself, "I had to think fast. I didn't know what else to say. I acted as if I detested having you here and I wanted to keep it quiet. The last thing I want is for that to get around the office." He shuddered theatrically. "My reputation would be ruined-"

The oven timer going off interrupted his mini-rant. He pulled the lasagna out of the oven while she got out some plates and silverware. The glass fronted cabinets didn't leave anything hidden. From where she was it looked as if the only dishes he owned was a matched set in pale green. No decorative jam jars, souvenir mugs, mismatched plates- the normal collection of a life. It cemented her opinion that this was a corporate apartment he was using.

They ate sitting at the bar, still discussing Burton.

Christine was trying not to focus on how incredibly weird this was. It still felt like yesterday morning she was in his office threatening to arrest Quinn. It took some concentration to keep her mind on the real present.

"So to sum up we have to pretend...however easy that is...to loath and despise each other so he doesn't suspect we're working together to destroy him?"

"That's about the long and short of it."

She grinned, "Excellent. I love a good plot to annihilate someone."

James snorted, "I should know. I was the target of yours often enough."

"But you always made it through. Oh dear, this will mean I have to forgive Captain Becker for that stunt with the recorder." Christine lamented.

"He's a very reasonable man. I'm sure if you talk to him you can reach an understanding." He waited a beat for her to be chewing, "Probably an understanding not to badmouth the minister when I'm annoyed at you."

"Oh ha ha," she barked dryly, his plot to have her choke on her food failing, "That's so funny I forgot to laugh."

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**A/N:** Don't really combine alcohol and any medication. I put that in there because when people are grieving and upset they tend to do stupid things and not care that it's a stupid thing. If you like it please review.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Thursday found Abby wandering in into his office instead of Burton. He actually liked the tough blonde woman, she didn't cause trouble and she kept Connor from doing too many ridiculous things. That was a miracle in and of itself. Except for when she let him get his hands on a gun.

"Yes?" He asked her when it was apparent she was going to hover in the doorway until acknowledged. "Do you need something?"

She bounced all the way into his office and sat down. "No, I was just wondering how Christine Johnson was doing?"

"Annoyingly well." He replied shortly.

"Do you think she would like to go shopping tonight?"

"I don't know." He raised his hands up like he was lifting the question up to God. "Why should I know?"

Abby rolled her eyes. "Well, I can't exactly call her and unless you've been shopping for her she's only got a very limited wardrobe."

He replied dryly, "I recall dozens of shopping bags."

"It wasn't that many! Anyway, she probably still needs makeup and girl things..." Abby trailed off.

Lester groaned. Girl things. "I'll ask her. If she feels up to it then I'll call you. Who else knows she's staying at my place?"

Abby squirmed a bit, "Only Connor, but he knows not to talk about!"

"Right. He'd better remember that."

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So it was a little after six he found himself alone in his flat, Christine having been whisked away by Abby with his charge card again. He made a point of giving it to Abby with dire threats about unnecessary spending.

Christine said a few snotty things just to keep their cover intact and the womanfolk took off for parts unknown. He settled down to enjoy an evening to himself.

"Is he like that all the time?" Abby asked the older woman on the way to the mall. "Picking at you?"

She shrugged, "Constantly. You can't imagine how tedious it gets. He's always been like that."

"Why don't you go to a hotel?"

"Hotel's cost money. Being dead isn't a very financially solvent state." Christine rolled her eyes. It begins. "And when I'm on the pain killers I can't shut up. He was afraid I would blat something classified to some random person. Frankly, I probably would."

"Really? Like six drinks can't shut up?"

"Yup. Minus the hangover." Christine rubbed her forehead and started the first awkward conversation of many, "Listen, Abby, I'm really sorry about before. The whole arresting you thing. That wasn't personal, it was mostly just to needle James."

"Oh don't worry about. I mean, don't do it again," She hastened to add, "But it was a long time ago. Are you going to work in the ARC now?"

"No. James won't hire me. I think he's frightened I'll take over the ARC."

"Too bad. We could use another girl around. Let me know if you start to feel sick or anything okay?"

"Don't worry, I will let you know." Christine smiled at Abby, "I'm so looking forward to getting some make-up, covering up these bruises, and spending James's money. Mostly spending his money. Have you had dinner yet?"

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He was not waiting up. He was absolutely not waiting up. He just didn't want to go to sleep with the door unlocked. That's what he kept telling himself. It was pushing eleven when he heard the rattle of the door knob. James hung back in the study listening, he heard two voices. Damn. And what sounded like a lot of packages. Double damn.

There was girlish giggling that he thankfully identified as Abby instead of Christine. He couldn't take it any more, he walked into the living room. "Ladies." He greeted them both. "How was your outing?"

"Fab." Abby said with a too wide eyes and a grin. "Very fab."

He focused on her, "Have you been drinking?"

"I'm of age!" She protested, "Anyway I have a driver, Connor's downstairs. He said to say hi. Hi. He didn't want to come up for some reason."

James wheeled around to face Christine, who was gathering up an armful of bags they had dropped on the couch. "You're on three different medications and having side effects from all of them, why on earth would you go drinking? Do you even know how incredibly stupid that is?"

She rolled her eyes at him, "I wasn't drinking. Just Abby. Connor was egging her on. He met us at the restaurant."

"Restaurant? Which restaurant?"

He didn't have to fake his outrage when she named off the most expensive place around that didn't require reservations. "Oh, here's your card back." Christine retrieved it from her new purse with a charming smile. "You should come with us next time. Since you paid."

Abby was watching the back and forth with some interest, but even in her alcohol fueled state she realized she did work for Lester and she should probably be going before she got sacked.

"See you later Christine, I hope you feel better. Good night Lester." She ducked back out the door before James could start lecturing her.

He continued glaring at Christine until Abby shut the door behind her.

"How did it go?"

She sighed, and slipped her shoes off. Lester realized idly that barefoot, they were exactly the same height. "I convinced her that I can't really shut up. She thinks that's why I'm in isolation here at your place. Connor's a bit of a silly boy. Amazing to think he's the one that's done so much on anomaly research."

"He is very silly," James agreed with her, "but truly brilliant. He's also enamored with Burton. He doesn't have the best sense in the world. Gullible as a baby duck sometimes."

"Could he be involved?"

"Probably, but not knowingly with something foul." He winced at the unintended pun, "Burton has gone out of his way to pet on Connor and feed his ego."

Christine pursed her lips. "Interesting. I'll keep hanging out with Abby then. It will give me an edge. She'll tell him and Burton can feel clever massaging the information out of her boyfriend."

"How much did you blow on drinks?" He was intensely curious, "and that was your money you were spending, not mine."

She laughed and waved him off. "Connor was buying them, and he paid for his meal. He doesn't want to get on your bad side. It was very sweet actually."

"At least he has some sense of propriety." James gruffed.

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Friday was almost a normal day. An anomaly opened up in the middle of a playground and a large group of children spent the morning playing with brightly colored ancient peacocks that didn't have sense enough to be frightened of five year olds.

He spent the day trying to unravel Christine's life. Getting a death certificate invalidated was surprisingly complicated, but there was a procedure for it. He was waiting for conformation back from the appropriate people before he could proceed.

Burton waltzed in near the end of the day, acting super casual.

"How's Mrs. Johnson?"

"Annoying." Lester ignored him and hoped he would go away. That wasn't going to happen. He just wasn't that lucky on a Friday. Or any day really.

"I'm glad to hear she's healing so well. Is she still on those unfortunate medications?"

Lester made a big production of dropping his pen and looking away from his work. "Yes. She'll be on them for another few weeks. Then she's moving out, I don't care where she goes as long as it's away from me. Are you sure that company condo is full?"

Burton laughed, "Alas, yes. I'm sure she'll be adequately compensated if she takes the job. Moving quickly shouldn't be an issue."

"Then I'll make sure she takes the job. What do you want her for anyway?"

"Management. I've been looking into her record and she was very good at what she does. Since as far as she's concerned she never stopped, I'm sure it will all work out. Can she be here at eight?"

"I suppose. I can bring her with me." Lester winced, "Oh damn, after your interview she'll be wandering around the ARC for the rest of the day!"

Burton smirked at him, "If she takes the job then she'll be occupied doing paperwork for the rest of the day." He shrugged, "If she doesn't, I'll have my secretary take her home."

"Fine." Lester screwed up his face in distaste. "I'll have to give her my spare key if that happens."

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That evening he started his customary Friday night drive out to his house in the country. This time, for the first time, he had a passenger. Christine had borrowed one of his spare luggage from the hall closet and packed up some clothes.

She was sitting with one arm resting on the window looking out. Her hair was down and gathered back in a loose ponytail. It made her look much more innocent and less devious than he knew she was.

"Is everything all right?" He asked quietly.

She rested her hand briefly on her forehead before answering him. "Sure. Everything's fine. I was just can't seem to think of anything else but my mum just now."

Damn damn damn. "Please don't start crying." He requested a bit desperately.

It made her smile, "I'm not going to start crying again. I would hate to make you uncomfortable while you were driving."

"Oh. Good."

She waited a few moments before speaking again, "When you're not driving on the other hand, then you're fair game."

Tartly, he replied, "Glad to know I exist solely for your amusement."

"Everyone needs a hobby." She bantered back at him before they settled into companionable silence.

It was nearly dark when they pulled in the lane that led to his house. "Has this place been in your family long?" She asked as she took in the beautiful scenery of the English countryside.

He surprised her by issuing a short laugh. "No, I bought this place about ten years ago. It was a foreclosure. I was advised that it would be a good investment."

"Is everything an investment to you?"

He pondered it. "No, but a lot of things are."

They finally reached the end of the dirt lane. He pulled up to a gate and looked at her significantly. "What?"

"I'm driving." James nodded at the gate. She groaned and got out of the car. He smirked at her as she pulled it open for him to drive through. He waited while she closed it behind them and hooked the chain back on the nail.

Christine commented when she got back in the car, "I'm surprised you don't keep it locked."

He shrugged. "It's a little community. The neighbors keep an eye on the place for me during the week."

The winding driveway finally terminated at a large stone house with peaked eaves and big windows with wooden trim. It was two stories, a bit sprawling and completely traditional, including ivy climbing up the walls. Amazed at the 'little place in the country,' she asked, "How old is this house?"

"I'm told about two hundred years. It had been on the market for ages before I bought it, I've been fixing it up."

Christine unfastened her seat belt and got out. "It's beautiful."

"Thank you." He pulled her bag out of the back seat without her asking him. Still examining the house, she followed him inside. As soon as she walked in the house she knew that this was his home, not the sterile corporate flat in the stylish part of London.

"So, where are my mothers photo albums?"

He glanced at her. "Upstairs. Come on." Still lugging her luggage, and wondering what on earth she packed for a two day stay in the country that could possibly be so heavy, he led the way up the stairs.

Curious she asked, "How many bedrooms does this house have?"

"Just the one, we'll have to share the bed. Huddle for warmth and all that." James said with a straight face that he only managed to hold for about four seconds. "Only joking. There's four upstairs and one downstairs." He proved it by opening the first door up the stairs and showing her the room.

Where the other bedroom at the flat looked like a hotel room, this one looked like someone's little brother's room that he'd outgrown and the parents hadn't redecorated yet. The furniture didn't match, the bedspread didn't match the pillow cases and there were framed posters on the walls.

Only the fact the posters were of classical masterpieces betrayed that Lester probably had picked out the décor for this room. He had a copy of Starry Starry Night in his study in the flat also, along with the Monet. It seems they must be favorites of his.

Christine noticed a few pictures on the tall dresser and walked over to have a closer look. "Is this your family?"

He joined her. "Yes. That's my parents, and this one is my brothers and sisters. They made us line up by age on the back porch for that."

She took the picture in her hand and did a quick headcount. "There's twelve of you?" She was amazed as he explained. "Fourteen, actually. Ruth and Peter hadn't arrived yet. I'm that one." He pointed out a grinning little boy with dirt on his face seated between a littler girl and slightly bigger boy.

Christine made a point of holding the photograph up to his face and comparing it to him now. "I can only say you improved with age."

He said dryly, "Thank heaven for that. If you're finished looking at my excessively large family, I'll show you where your mum's albums are."

She followed him down the hall to another closed door. He opened it and she gasped. It was a library, a two story library right at the end of the house. He stood aside and let her walk into the room ahead of him, feeling a bit of pride at how he had remodeled these two rooms.

"I took the floor out, and added the walkway around the sides on this level."

Christine took two steps forward and leaned out on the railing. "This is amazing." There were thousands of books lining the walls. A wrought iron circular staircase led downstairs in the corner. Below, there was two chairs and a couch that looked incredibly comfortable, just the place to lay and read on a lazy afternoon. There were even skylights in the roof. It was stunning.

James leaned against the wall and watched her be amazed at his library. Very few people had been here besides family and he got so few chances to show it off. Eventually she did glance back at him. "They're over here." He led the way around the walkway that circled the room to the opposite side.

She recognized her mothers flowery albums sticking in a shelf of albums. She let out a small sound that might have been a suppressed sob when she pulled the first one off the shelf.

"You promised you wouldn't cry." He accused her weakly.

"I did not, but you may want to leave because I'm going to cry."

"All right." He placed a companionable hand on her shoulder, "good night Christine." He squeezed her shoulder and left her alone.

Carefully, she pulled all the albums she recognized off the shelf and carried the whole stack to her room. She sat cross legged on the bed and flipped the first one open. She was met by her parent's wedding photographs. Like she warned James, she wept at the sight of their smiling faces, so young and so in love.

She ended up curled up on the bed, clutching a pillow as the grief finally overwhelmed her. They were gone, they were really gone. She was really alone. It finally completely hit her and she cried herself to sleep.

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In the morning James rose early, like he always did and wearing only his customary black pajama pants and just this once, a white undershirt as a concession to his guest, he went down to the kitchen. Christine's door was still open and he peeked in on his way past.

She was bundled under the covers, with only the top of her head showing. He paused for a moment and listen to her slow easy breathing. Not that he'd ever tell her, he had heard her crying last night and had debated with himself standing in the hallway if she would want some comfort or not to have him see her so vulnerable like that.

In the end he decided to leave her alone. She didn't like him, he didn't really care for her, it would just be too awkward if he had...what? Held her while she cried? They weren't friends. He shook his head as he went. No, they weren't friends.

He went down and got the coffee going.

When Christine woke up a bit later she felt terribly worn out. She couldn't face the world without some caffeine in her system. James heard her make her way down the stair and looked up from his paper.

"Coffee's on." He said simply, glancing at her.

She muttered something and started to fix herself a cup. It was probably best he didn't know exactly what she said. He commented, "I hope you aren't planning on me entertaining you today."

"Not really. I expect with that library I can entertain myself." Surprisingly, she didn't sound pissy once she had a sip of the expensive French roast he kept stocked here.

"There's frozen waffles and some pancake mix. I was going to make something for myself in a bit." She was a guest damn it, he couldn't keep himself from being polite, "would you like some?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"Either." She shrugged. "I'm not a picky eater."

He thought of the other morning and replied dryly, "I'd already figured that out. Complete barbarian is what you are."

She glared at him. "Lots of people put syrup on eggs."

"If you say so." Clearly, he wasn't going to believe her.

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After breakfast Lester actually did 'retire to the library' and she decided to explore. The house was huge. It took a bit to thoroughly explore it. When she had finished opening every door and cabinet, except for the master bedroom, she went to the library with her questions.

James was laying on the couch, still in his pajama pants and undershirt, with a novel in his hand. Judging from the cowboy on the cover it was a western. He merely glanced at her when she walked in and noted that she took the time to shower and change into regular clothes. Another skirt and a button up shirt. She looked ready to head to the office if her hair wasn't damp and pulled back in a messy ponytail.

"Did you enjoy prowling around?"

"I did. It was very entertaining, but I can't help wondering what you have the barracks upstairs for?" She was referring to the bedroom that had four bunk beds crammed inside.

"You saw my family photo. It's for when my nieces and nephews are here."

Amused, she sat down in the chair. "How many of those do you have?"

James didn't even try to guess, "You have to fetch me a pen and some paper if you really want that answer. A lot. I'm the only one that hasn't reproduced multiple times."

He tried to go back to his book but she wasn't finished yet. "What do you do here all weekend?"

"I relax. Usually. Not that that's going to happen this weekend with you nattering on at me."

She ignored his tone. "How big is this place?"

James sighed the sigh of the long suffering. "It was on twenty acres when I bought it and I've been gradually purchasing up the bordering bits of farmland as they come up for sale over the years to expand it."

Christine waited, "So...how big is this place?"

"Two hundred and twelve acres."

She gave a low whistle, "So you have an estate in the country, not a 'place'."

"I suppose. If you want to think of it that way. I don't."

"So I can go for a walk without trespassing?"

"Absolutely. You can walk for quite a ways before you're off the place. Don't cross any stone fences unless they're very close to the house. Some of the farther out ones I own but I'd have to show you and frankly, I'd have to get dressed for that."

"You sound awfully concerned that I don't annoy the neighbors."

"I like my neighbors." His tone implied that he liked them a lot more than he cared for her.

"You just stay here in your jammies, I'm going for a walk." She retorted.

James watched her sashay out of the library. He couldn't tell if she was irritated at him or not. He decided it was Saturday and he didn't care. He went back to his book.

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She stayed gone until nearly lunch. He was nearly ready to leave her there with only frozen waffles when she slipped in the kitchen door. "There you are," he spotted her and said, "do you want to go to lunch or not?"

"Yes. You didn't tell me there was a stable out back."

His brow furrowed as he tried to figure out why exactly he was supposed to tell her that. "So?" It was a little six stall affair that he had only had a new roof put on and a few minor bits of damage repaired when he bought the place. He used it to store the lawn mower and rarely thought of it.

"So, nothing. I'm just surprised that's all." She seemed to battle with herself for an instant before telling him honestly, "This is an amazing property. I love this house."

He came around and felt her cheek, "Are you sure you feel alright? You're being civilized-" She swatted his hand away. "I can be civil. What were you saying about lunch?"

"There's a little pub in the village that does lunch. It's really the only place around. I usually go there for lunch and dinner."

"To the pub then."

At the pub Christine noticed immediately that they were getting more than the usual number of glances. "I thought you said you were here every weekend?"

"I am. They're trying to figure out who you are and why you look like you were beaten by a mobster with a tire iron."

Knowing she was the cause of the attention instead of him was disconcerting for her. It got worse when the waitress came over to their booth.

"Afternoon James," The perky late thirty-forty-maybe early fifty something with bleach blonde hair greeted him, "the usual?"

"Yes please."

She turned and made no secret about appraising Christine. "Is this one of your sisters? I thought I had met all of them."

"Yes you have and no she isn't. This is Christine Johnson, a co-worker of mine."

"Uh-huh." She focused in on the stitches trailing around Christine's face and the skillfully applied make-up. "Honey, what happened to you?"

"Car wreck," she lied and looked at James for a cover story. He just looked extra innocently at her and didn't say a word. She was going to have to cover for herself. "I got knocked about pretty badly."

James finally took pity on her. "She's had a bad knock to the head and the doctors don't want her left alone. I brought her along for the weekend."

"Oh. Is that all?" Plainly, the waitress didn't believe him.

"That's all Ashley, I promise, I'm saving myself for you." She laughed and swatted him with the menu in her hand before passing it over to Christine. "You'll be needing this then. Mr. the usual here hasn't changed his order in months."

"Thank you." Amused, she took the little two page menu and flipped it open.

It was all the normal pub food. It only took her a second to make up her mind. "A cheeseburger, and a coke please." Ashley's eyes widened a little. "So, two usuals." She noted the order down, "Coming right up." With one more intensely curious, speculating look at them both she left.

"You realized that any hope of her not thinking we're an item just went out the window?" James said sourly.

"Oh please, how was I to know what you normally get? Don't be paranoid." She chided him with a small smile. "Is this what you do all weekend? Read, eat, read, eat, read?"

"No." He rolled his eyes, "That's only what I do on Saturdays. Tomorrow morning I'm going to church. You're welcome to come with me if you're allowed to cross onto sacred ground without bursting into flames."

She rolled her eyes back at him, "Don't be so dramatic James, I'm not a vampire, I'm out in the daylight. Here I thought you were a reader and you'd know your basic sci-fi character types." Her voice dripped with disappointment.

James realized she did have a point, but he wasn't ready to concede just yet. "What about werewolf? We haven't had a full moon yet-"

"I'm not a werewolf either!" She chuckled, "You dreadful man, I'll go with you just to prove that you are being ridiculous." Idly, she traced a circle on the table with her finger before looking up at him with a smirk, "Tell me, do you attend church every Sunday?"

"Yes...unless something comes up at work." He didn't know where this was going. She didn't keep him waiting.

"So...you need regular confirmation you have a soul?"

Over at the bar Ashley listened to them banter back and forth and made a mental note to ask her grandmother to keep an eye on them tomorrow. There were some advantages to living in a tiny village.

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The next day found James wearing a suit and tapping his foot impatiently by the front door. "Woman, we're going to be late!" He bellowed up the stairs at her, "Hurry up!"

"I'm coming!" She shouted back at him as she hustled down the stairs, shoes in her hand. "You said we had to leave by eight thirty."

"That was five minutes ago!"

"Oh, we'll be there on time." She ignored his hovering and slipped her shoes on. "Don't worry so much, you'll get your blood pressure up."

"My blood pressure is fine! Or it was, until I met you!" Still complaining he pulled the door shut behind them and locked it.

"Whine, whine, whine, would you like some cheese for that whine?"

An incoherently strangled noise was the only response she heard.

In spite of his complaining they arrived with plenty of time, and they needed it. Their two appearances in the pub for lunch and dinner had ignited local interest. To be plain, they were the most exciting thing going on right now. The tiny village of Dewberry Mills didn't have much excitement.

James Lester they had know for a decade as the man who purchased and repaired the old Cooper house, and he added a few bits and pieces to the whole property in a very polite very respectful manner. They liked him. He came to church regularly and wasn't a stodgy Londoner playing tourist in the countryside like so many others.

The mysterious woman with fading bruises and stitches along the side of her face and on her arms...no fewer than four people approached her and asked very pointed questions about the 'car wreck' she was in. It seemed that there was a raging theory that she was running from an abusive husband.

Only her lifetime working in secret government projects enabled her to dodge their questions without giving details but things were getting tense when the organist finally started playing, signaling the start of service.

While Christine was fending off the old hen's club that was oh so politely trying to find out about her whole life James was drawn off by David West, one of the younger men in the village. His grandparents ran the only petrol station. "Is that your girlfriend?" At the ripe old age of twenty four, he wasn't shy.

"No. Heaven forbid." James replied shortly, with most of his attention on the lies Christine was spinning to defect the older woman. They were going to have to compare notes later to keep their stories straight.

"She's cute, does she have a boyfriend?"

"No." James replied dryly, finally dragging his attention over to David who thought he had a reputation as a ladies man. "She's much too old for you. She'd eat you alive."

"I might like that." David glanced at James who wasn't really paying attention to him at all and got a playful gleam in his eye. "I bet she'd be good-"

"David!" James hissed, "We are in church!"

"I was going to say at dancing! Where's your mind at old man?"

He had Connor Temple during the week and David West on the weekends. It never ended. The music starting up and he used that to escape from David and flee back to the pew.

"Why am I the new hot topic?" She whispered at him when he sat down.

"I have no idea." He truly didn't. If any of them told him that they made a lovely couple he might vomit.

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On the drive back into London that evening Christine suddenly asked, "Can we stop at Brackenwood and see Star?"

James raised an eyebrow and gave up his hope of getting a bit of work done this evening. "I suppose. We'll have to stop and get some carrots. That pony is a dreadful nuisance if we approach him empty handed."

"He's a horse." Crossly, she insisted on the semantics of it.

"He's thirteen and half hands high. That means he's a pony."

They bickered on the point back and forth all the way through the shop for some carrots, and down the road to the barn. James parked the car as a sudden worry struck him. "What are we going to tell them? They all believe you're dead." It was late but sometimes there were people about in the evenings.

"Coma. Amnesia. Classified mission. Take your pick." She didn't really care.

"No, it has to be believable, not sound like a bad B movie."

Christine groaned. "You're making me write my own cover story? Lazy bastard." She pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear and thought for a moment. "I thought you spent the past week putting something together?"

"About getting your finances straightened out and not legally being dead!"

He waspishly defended himself. She only groaned again.

"Fine, I was on a classified mission to third world part of the world and there was a bad bus wreck. It burned to the axles. Another woman was mistakenly identified as me, she died. I was in a hospital in a coma for the last three years under her name. Sadly, she didn't have any family or I might have been rescued sooner."

That had possibilities. "What about the current injuries?"

"Car wreck, last week."

"So you woke up from a coma sometime last week-"

She interrupted him, "Three months ago. I've been in physical therapy since then. All my muscle tone would have wasted away right?"

"Right. I see you've spun cover stories before?"

Sweetly, she smiled at him as she exited the car, "That's classified."

They didn't get a chance to try out their cover story, they didn't see a soul when they walked back to the ponies pasture down the hill. The little herd spotted someone coming to visit them and came ambling over to the gate. James rolled his eyes at the chuffing, snorting, filthy ponies that were entirely too interested in him. He looked over at Christine.

"Are you going to cry again?" James demanded as she locked eyes on Star.

"I'm not going to cry! Cut a girl a break here." She slipped through the gate and hugged Star. He nosed about her and made little huffing noises.

"He remembers me! Good boy!" She patted him and scratched his neck while the others surrounded her, determined that she didn't have food and moved on to the gate where James was waiting with a familiar orange bag.

She requested in a choked up voice, "Hand me some, please."

James merely passed her some carrots from the bag and pretended not to see the moisture in her eyes.

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The action starts in the next chapter! What is Burton up too? Please review.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

A/N: This one is a little short but I need to get the action rocking along.

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Monday morning bright and early they walked into the ARC, pretending to despise each other. When they got to the check station Lester flashed his badge and signed Christine in as a guest. In a loud voice he requested that someone from security accompany her while she was in the building.

So it was a trio of people that walked over to Burton's suite of offices. His secretary Matilda Jones was typing something when they entered the outer office. "Here we are, don't expect me to wish you luck." James waltzed out, leaving the security man in his wake.

"As if I'd need it!" She shot back at him before turning to the secretary, "I have an appointment at eight." Christine said like someone that was used to being obeyed immediately.

The older secretary was used to people acting like they were special. At least this time her orders coincided with Christine's so she wasn't forced to destroy any middle management egos. "Yes ma'am. Just in there." Regally, like a queen Christine swept past her into Burton's office. "Close the door, and leave your bodyguard outside." He directed her.

Pretending to be shocked to see him, she did as he asked, then she stalked up to the desk. "What the hell are you doing here?" She hissed at him with her hands planted on his desk.

"Mrs. Johnson, or can I call you Christine?"

"You can call me whatever the hell you like once you tell me why you're here."

He steepled his hands in front of him and acted resigned. "After you decided to downsize me out of a job, I was forced to seek employment outside the civil service." He swept his hands to indicate the huge office, "and here we are. How times have changed. It really worked out for the best for me."

Gesturing to the chair he told her, "Please have a seat, Mrs. Johnson."

Still suspicious of him, she did as he asked while he started to explain. "I was curious if you had changed."

"What do you mean?"

"Are you still ambitious? Are you still the Christine Johnson that manufactured a reason to sack me over the merest suspicion of impropriety?"

Not even pretending the annoyance she felt, she snapped, "What do you want Philip?"

"I want you." He grinned at the obvious crude double meaning, "To work for me. I've got a simple job in mind for you with a big payoff."

"What?"

"I want you to destroy Lester. You can have his job once he's gone. I have the feeling we can work together and accomplish so much more if you were in charge of the ARC."

She didn't have to fake her surprise at that. It took every bit of her training to focus in past the shock. "He's harder to destroy than you think." She replied once her tongue worked again. "I've tried before."

"Yes but then you had something to lose. Now look at you, no job, no resources, get rid of him and you'll have everything you've lost back again. You position, your power, your money...everything." His voice trailed off.

"Take it or leave it Mrs. Johnson."

She didn't even have to think about it. "I'll take it."

"Excellent. There is a bit of a deadline on this. He must be gone by the end of the month. Now I understand you're living with him? How did that come about?"

Mechanically, she fed him the same story about drug interactions and ended with, "I'll be off the pills in another two weeks. Once I have a bit of money I'll move into the first flat I can find. Being in the same space as that insufferable man is driving me insane."

"If you had a bit of money now would you move out?"

"Yes. But that would make him suspicious, unless you have a previous history of advancing paychecks or loaning money?" she inquired sweetly.

He tossed his hands up, "Alas, no. Quite the opposite actually." Lester had to get the Minister to order him to pay Connor and Abby that back pay. "On second thought it might be easier to have you in the same flat as him. It won't take much to get him removed, just the hint he's broken the rules."

While she contemplated that Burton looked right at her and asked, "Why did you suspect I was a spy?"

Christine only smiled at him. "I didn't take my pills this morning. I wanted to be clear headed for the interview."

He laughed, his ploy failing. "I don't think that will be necessary in the future, I need you to be healthy for this job. Bringing down the slippery James Lester. Can you get him disgraced and tossed in jail? I'll give you a bonus if you manage that. Perhaps something with small boys...maybe goats..." He stroked his chin and pondered the possibilities. "Make it spectacular. You aren't going to tell him what's going on while you're...under the influence?"

"No. I hate his guts." Christine managed to put a fair bit of disgust into her tone, "No amount of medication could make me let this slip."

"How are you going to get rid of him?" Burton inquired.

"I'll find something. I've got two weeks to work." She promised him. "Don't do anything hasty like bugging his flat. You have to leave me alone to work."

He smirked and knew exactly what she caught him at before. "I would never dream of jostling your elbow."

"Good, now, about my salary..."

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Thirty minutes later found her sitting in a small side office filling out form after form for her new job. There were so many thing she still had to leave blank. She got a bit of notepaper from the secretary and started to make a list of things she was still needing. Bank account...phone number...car...

Abby found her there a few hours later.

"Did you get the job?" The blonde girl parked herself in the other chair and waited eagerly.

"Yes." Christine smiled at her. "I'm going to be one of the managers in that corporation he works for. Some sort of liaison position."

"Neat." Abby drew the word out. "So how are you feeling?"

Christine thought about it and decided to start playing the game.

"Sick, and sore. I couldn't take my pills this morning, I didn't want to be indiscreet during the interview. I'll pop them when I leave here and take the evening set just before bed."

Abby looked so sympathetic at the moment that Christine kept talking. "I get the stitches out on Thursday, I expect that will make me feel better. They itch and get achy if I move around too much."

"How are you getting to your doctors office?"

She shrugged. "I expect I'll take a cab."

"I could take you, if I could get the time off work." Abby offered. Christine reached out and grabbed her hand, "That would be lovely. I'm sure it can be arranged. I expect if I threaten to chat up the cab driver then James will allow it. I'll have the added benefit of scaring him."

"You really enjoy harassing him, don't you?" The younger woman was quite amused at their mutual loathing.

Christine shrugged again. "It's a hobby. We've not gotten on since about the first minute we met. Believe me I think the highlight of his day is coming up with some good one-liner to zing me with. It's sad really."

Abby laughed with her.

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As soon as they got in the car to go back to his flat he started in on her.

"Did you get the job?"

"Yes." She held up a note that said, 'maintain cover', before crumpling it up and tossing it back in her purse. He didn't hesitate.

"Good. How soon until you get a check and can move out?"

"Two weeks. He won't advance me any money."

"Cheap bastard."

"I don't hear you offering me a loan."

"That's because I know you so much better than he does. It's bad enough I have to keep an eye on you until you can keep your mouth shut again."

She snorted and in mutual silence they got back to the building. She nudged him away from the lift and towards the stairs, judging the five story walk worth the risk of breaking routine.

"What? Why are we walking?" He asked once they were in the stairwell. She slipped her high heels off and started climbing up the stairs. "Did you find out what he's scheming?"

Christine laughed, a bright cheerful sound that echoed in the empty stairwell. "His plan? He wants me to destroy you. Get you sacked, or arrested if I can manage it."

"That complete cretin!" James exclaimed from behind her.

"It gets better. He's rewarding me with your job. I told him not to do anything cute like bugging your flat, but the car is too big a risk. Don't say anything on your phone either. We'll have to work out a code."

James paused for a second and looked at her in shock. "Bugging my flat? That's illegal!" He huffed and followed her up the stairs.

"Never stopped me." She dropped casually.

He was so surprised he stopped walking for a minute. "You what!"

"Don't be such a wet blanket. It's not like you did anything interesting anyway. Let me search the place before we make plans. For the obvious reasons, I don't trust him."

Absolutely stunned he let them into the flat and sat on the couch. She turned the tv on the news and turned it up slightly, then did the same with the tv in his home office and her bedroom. The radio in the kitchen joined the general din and she emerged from the junk cupboard with a screwdriver in her hand.

For the next hour he watched her remove every vent and electrical cover, intently examining behind them. Then she moved onto the light fixtures, checking every bit of electrical wiring she could reach. After that she stood in each room and did a slow turn about and repeated her search the first day for listening devices.

Her rifling through his briefcase and checking all the seams and taking the handle off to check it was solid did raise an eyebrow but he didn't stop her. She was serious about this. She even popped the cover off all the electrical devices and took a quick peek inside, all the tv's, radio, even the microwave and toaster.

Intent on her search she didn't see how James as watching her, like she was dangerous creature that might turn on him at any moment and rip his throat out. He wasn't quite certain what he got himself into. She took interoffice politics to an entirely new level. Competitive didn't begin to describe her.

Eventually she had done all she could. She waved him to follow her and pointed to his bedroom door. He sighed, and opened it for her. He helped her look for anything out of the ordinary, and he rifled through his dresser and checked under each drawer. James drew the line at letting her toss his closet. He did that while she perched awkwardly on the edge of his bed. He was suddenly glad he always made it up in the mornings.

"Did you check all your suit pockets and cufflinks?"

"Yes."

"Then we're clean." Christine declared. "We can plot here. I've got to make a shopping list for you."

"Shopping?"

"Do you have any listening devices handy?"

"No!" He gasped, "That's illegal!"

"Stop being such a boy scout!" She snapped right back at him. "If you want to know what the next step in his plan is then we've got to bend a few rules. We've got a deadline also. If I can't run you off in the next few weeks he might resort to something drastic. He's dangerous."

"Drastic? What do you mean drastic?"

"He was pretty hot for you to be gone. He's got big plans and I have the sudden desire to stomp all over them."

"Why? Isn't my job what you wanted?"

"It was, three years ago, or seven days ago depending on how you count. Not now. Now I just want to destroy him and get on with my life." She smiled and was really quite scary, "It might even be therapeutic."

James thought about it and couldn't really find any objections. "All right then. Were do we start?"

"We're going to need about a half dozen cheap, pay as you go mobile phones, one of those new droid phones, and a soldering iron. Like I said, I'll make you a list. You'll have to pay cash for everything..."

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Two hours later he was sitting at his bar, marveling at the woman next to him. "Where did you learn to do that?"

She barely glanced at him. "I've worked for the MI-6 my entire life. I've picked up a few things."

James surveyed the dismantled mobile phones and random circuit boards, bits of impossibly tiny wire and a few other electronic things he wasn't sure what they were but the man at the computer story had retrieved little baggies from little bins full of little parts when asked for them.

He objected to her simple answer. "No, learning how to boot a computer up in safe mode so there's no password, that's picking something up or slapping a file cabinet in just the right place to make the lock disengage, that's picking something up. This is something else entirely."

"I've always been a hands on type of girl." She ignored him again as she assembled various components under a giant tabletop magnifying glass and started to carefully tack them together with her new soldering iron.

"Did you build whatever you spied on me with?" Desiring the details of that had been rattling around in his brain all evening.

"If you must know, I didn't. I had resources then, I didn't have to resort to crude hands on devices. We really need to discuss your resource management."

"Given that this is highly illegal, I don't think we will."

"Building listening devices isn't illegal." She smirked, "We won't be breaking any laws until we plant them."

"You're mad."

"One of us has to be. Burton isn't going to spare you because of something being the tiniest bit illegal." She handed him the giant tweezers and jerked her chin towards the tiny bits under the magnifying glass, "See where I'm holding this?"

He took the tweezers from her and kept them exactly where they were.

"Yes."

"Hold it right there." She started to weld again.

"I can't believe I'm doing this." He complained to the ceiling.

"Don't move," She snapped, "you're mucking up my listening device."

He dragged his attention back to what she was doing and asked, "What's the droid phone for? I had to get it added onto my mobile plan, they wouldn't sell it to me separately. I got it insured so when you dismantle it I can report it as lost and get my money back." He was a touch proud of himself for that bit of forethought.

"It's for me." Now she was smirking at him, "We've got to be able to stay in touch at the office."

He was appalled. "It's a four hundred pound phone before the rebate!"

"So?" She was indifferent.

"Damnable woman."

"Oh, you'll thank me later. You might want to get one for yourself, it's got twice the processing power of that old blackberry you use." Christine could sense him frowning at her and grinned again. "I looked it up. There's been so many advances in miniaturization... it's going to take me ages to get caught up."

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It took her two hours to get everything wired up to her satisfaction and it was nearing midnight. She stretched on the bar stool and surveyed her work with no small amount of pride.

There were six little hodge-podge listening devices laid out on the counter.

It was just cheap mobile phone microphones that would pick up everything, transmitters, and a connection to be jacked into a power source. It was about as simple as it got.

"Now what?" James asked her. She shrugged. "Two for his office, one for his car and three for his house."

"How exactly do you plan on planting them?"

"The car will be the easiest. If he parks it on the street then I can install it tonight. Do you know where he lives?"

James shook his head and she despaired. "We are having that conversation about resources." She promised him then she shook her head and had the totally unintended consequence of showing off her long brunette hair. "Honestly, how did you get as high as you have without knowing basic operational information like where your biggest enemy lives?"

"Actually, my biggest enemy is living down the hall from me." He retorted, but it wasn't true, exactly.

She laughed. "Aren't you past that? We hadn't been enemies since you took my cat to the vet."

James took this opportunity to bring up another point. "Seriously, why are you helping me? I know it's not the money, you're brilliant, you can make the money back in a few years' time."

Christine considered the question honestly and met James's eyes for the briefest instant. "During the interview he said if I helped him destroy you I could have it all back. Everything I lost. Except I can't."

She started to bundle the trash up in a few small plastic bags because she just couldn't face him now, "I can never have my mum back and you were really kind to her during the last few years of her life. I'll always owe you for that."

She didn't tell him that there were a few pictures of him, seated on that horrible rosebud print sofa in her mum's living room with a mug of tea in his hand and carefully not smiling at the camera. Her old cat Jack was perched on the arm of the sofa watching him like a hawk. That was probably why he wasn't smiling. Jack had a habit of occasionally going on kamikaze missions against all humans for existing in his reality.

James watched her clean up the mess and then before he could think better of it he reached out and ran a hand up her arm to rest on her shoulder. It wasn't quite a hug. "Thank you."

The moment was suddenly not getting awkward in the way it was supposed to. She was...comfortable with his hand resting on her. That was unexpectedly odd. She had to break the moment somehow, she wasn't about to tell him that photographic proof he was nice to her mum and cat had made her rethink her feud. She said lightly, "And I despise Burton."

He didn't seem to notice how melancholy she suddenly became. "Tell me about that. What exactly was he doing that tipped you off?"

"I couldn't prove anything, but some technology we were perfecting was discovered being used by a Chinese agent. A whole field team was killed, that bastard. I think he sold it, and was eager for more, so I sacked him."

"China...that's an interesting theory. That would make him a traitor then." James perked up a bit. "We still shoot traitors. Do you think he's trying to secure the ARC for another country?"

"It could be. I don't know. I just don't know." She set the two bags with the discarded phone cases and electronic bits on the counter. "In the morning we're going to stop somewhere on the way to the ARC. It doesn't matter where. We'll each dispose of one bag in the restroom bin. Even if he's got someone following you they shouldn't find it."

James thought for a moment before saying, "There's a bakery on the way. I stop sometimes for a danish and coffee."

"Excellent." She was quite pleased with herself.

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If you like it or if you don't then please review and let me know. I know where I want to go with this story but getting there is going to take some encouragement.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

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In the morning James was surprised to see Christine was already up and dressed. She had even made coffee. "You're up early."

He watched her out of the corner of his eye while walking to the coffee pot. Her hair was still down, and damp from a shower. If he was in an honest mood he would admit that she was easy on the eyes and not the worst thing to see first thing in the morning, if he ignored how very dangerous she was.

Christine didn't seem to notice him watching her, "I'm excited. I get to bring Burton down. We've got to make plans anyway. How much do you trust your Captain Becker? Can I safely assume he's still your man?"

"Of course." James poured himself a cup of coffee and joined her at the table. "He got you without me needing to say a word."

She ignored his gloating, "I need you to get Becker inside his house and see what security he has. I can't risk going in without some basic idea of what he has set up. It would completely blow my cover if he had video of me bugging his house."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

She sipped her coffee and looked at him like he was daft. "Lie. Say our history together has reminded you of how easy it is to slip spies in. Order a security review of all key personnel's private residences. It will have the added benefit of finding any bugs he's planted on anyone else."

He considered that carefully with his most serious expression. "You know, I think I'm going to order Becker to do a security sweep." James replied thoughtfully.

She arched an eyebrow and reached across the table to pat the back of his hand. "Just let me do the scheming." With a grin she went back to her room to put on her make-up. He watched her saunter out of the room and wasn't really sure if he should be worried she was so good at this or happy she wasn't targeted at him anymore.

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It went like clockwork at the office. Becker didn't raise an eyebrow when he was ordered to do a sweep for bugs at all the key personnel's homes. He merely said 'yes sir,' and went to get on with it, with Lester's house key in his hand. A hopping furious Burton was in his office twenty minutes later.

"What the hell is this? Captain Becker asked me for my key and said he had to do some security sweep! What are you playing at?"

Lester stood up to him, resenting being shouted at. "Being around that insufferable woman has reminded me of exactly how easy it is infiltrating spies into this program!"

He met shout for shout, "She managed three, probably without breaking a sweat and the eight hours she had the place she found and arrested six others! It's a basic precaution we probably should have been doing regularly before now."

Burton ground his teeth but Lester could see that he believed him, "If it makes you uncomfortable then go with him." Lester flicked his fingers at the doorway, "I expect we can survive without you for an hour." He let the disdain drip from his voice.

The other man spun on his heels and stomped out of the office without replying to that snide remark.

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Down on the operations floor Jess was spinning her house key off the ring and blushing furiously. "Just don't look at the mess okay?" She pleaded with Becker, "and if it's all the same to you, will you please not let too many people roam through my bedroom?"

He knew very well that she had _such_ a crush on him. "I promise, no looking around." Becker glanced about to be sure no one was within earshot. "What are you doing this weekend?"

"Stuff. Reports. Why?"

He hesitated, "Would you like to go to see a band with me?"

Incredulously, she gasped. "Are you asking me out?"

Captain Becker denied it immediately, "Of course not. That'd be totally improper. We work together." She saw the slight gleam in his eye. "If we both happen to have dinner and see a band in the same place at the same time..at the same table...that would be totally acceptable."

"Right." She rolled the word around in her mouth, "As friends."

He grinned at her, "As far as anyone here is concerned. Now I've got to get back to work, and I promise not to look around your bedroom."

She turned beet red as she realized he was going to see her bedroom, her Hello Kitty pillow cases and did she remember to pick up her dirty clothes and toss them in the hamper this morning? Probably not. This was horrible.

Having collected all the keys, Captain Becker took a squad with him to begin the search. They didn't find a damn thing except Connor was a slob which he already knew, Jess liked manga which he didn't, and Burton was either a cross dresser or he had a girlfriend. Possibly a friend with benefits, judging by the lack of a feminine touch at his flat beyond some clothes.

The presence of female items in Lester's second bedroom did raise a few eyebrows but Becker gave very threatening chat about what would happen to the man who discussed any of the personal items they saw in the course of their search. Nobody wanted to spend the rest of their career guarding the car park outside while everyone else got to chase dinosaurs. Being exiled to Siberia wouldn't be worse than that!

They didn't discover any secret listening devices.

Captain Becker was reporting that to Lester just before work ended when his boss made a rather odd request. "Captain Becker, close the door." Curious, he did as he was ordered. "Have a seat." Lester was battling with himself about how much to reveal. What the hell.

"Yes sir?" Becker was intrigued.

Lester sighed and began a very edited cover story, "I have reason to believe that Burton is up to something."

"Really? What?"

"I can't talk about it. Damn, I can't talk about any of it but I need you to trust me. Will you?"

Becker didn't even have to think about it. "Yes sir."

"I need to know what security arrangements Burton has. His flat and the building and where his car is parked at night."

It didn't take a genius to work out what Lester carefully wasn't asking. "Do you want any help with...applying...this information?"

"No, I've got that covered. Don't investigate him either, we can't risk tipping him off. Just tell me about his security."

"All right..." Captain Becker began reciting the ways to get in and out of Burton's flat, where the CCTV cameras on the street were, how the parking garage was secured, the types of locks he had... Lester took notes.

When he was certain he had recorded everything accurately he tucked the notes into his pockets. "Do you know where Burton has that damnable woman?"

"I assume you're referring to Mrs. Johnson?"

"Is there any other? Now that she's working for him I expect he'll set her to spying on me. I'll have to watch myself all the time now."

"Why don't you move her out?"

Lester sighed and hated himself for doing this but he fed Captain Becker the same lie he told Burton. "The minister ordered me to deal with her. If she has an episode in some hotel bar then it'll be my head for letting her out in public."

"She could stay here. We have those overnight rooms set up."

He denied it immediately, "I do not want that woman wandering around here at all hours. It's bad enough Burton is keeping her here instead of putting her at his companies offices. At least at my flat she can't cause any damage beside annoy me."

"Does she? I can't imagine living with a woman that annoys me." Becker stated, fishing for details, exactly what he told his men not to do if they valued their lives but he was only human. He couldn't resist.

"We're not living like that! And don't spread it around she's there at all. It's only temporary. Make sure your soldiers keep their mouths shut about it." Lester demanded. "She stays in her room, except when she emerges to harass me."

Her ears must have been burning, she didn't even knock before sweeping into his office. "Do you mind you dratted woman? We were having a private conversation!" Lester snapped at her. "What do you want?"

"Burton told me to make myself at home. I'll be slowly taking over for him, he's got a lot of commitments in the next few months. So here I am." Her smile would have been completely appropriate on a shark. It still managed to cool a little when she met Becker's eyes. "Captain Becker."

"Ma'am. I'll just be going." He ducked out and headed at double speed in the general direction of away.

She clicked the door shut behind the retreating soldier and grabbed a post-it off the desk. "What the hell?" Lester snapped while she scribbled. "That doesn't excuse you from basic human courtesy." She held the note up. 'bugs here.'

"Damnable woman, I don't care if you work here now, you will give me the respect my position deserves."

"Right. So sorry to have offended you. I didn't realize you were so sensitive."

She fished her hand into her pocket and withdrew a wafer thin silver disk. She held it up warningly then grabbed his cell phone off the desktop and slid it apart. He watched while she fastened the two tiny wires to the battery terminals and snapped the case shut again with the ease of much practice.

The whole time she was bugging his phone they managed to keep up the same sniping dialogue that they had spent literally years perfecting.

It was a good thing there wasn't any cameras in the room. Anyone listening would believe that they loathed each other. Anyone watching would have some very pointed questions to ask, because he was casually checking his email while she was planting another bug in the wall socket.

They left work finally, her with a big folder of disclosure forms to read over and initial and him with his briefcase. At the flat she planted another bug in the briefcase hinge while he watched, amused.

After reassembling the hinge she set the briefcase down right next to the tv so the news program would cover the sounds of their voices. His phone was on the charger in his bedroom, out of earshot.

James waved her into the kitchen and whispered intimately in her ear, "Is this far enough away? What's the range on those?"

In a normal voice she said, "Yes, and ten feet maybe. Much less with the telly on. Text messages are safe enough, the one in the phone only picks up audio. I've got to swap the one in the briefcase out every other day when the battery dies."

Christine smiled at him, never missing a chance to prove a point, "Did you notice how easy and convenient that was? That was an excellent example of how simple things are when someone properly uses their resources."

He rolled his eyes at her. "What do you want for dinner?"

"What have we got?" She perched herself on the bar stool with her folder and watched him rummage through the fridge naming off items. "Pot stickers, frozen veggies, pasta, frozen pastry crusts, frozen chicken breasts...I could do chicken pot pie easily enough."

"Sounds good. I was getting a bit tired of takeaway for supper." Christine replied without looking up from her work. She was already flipping through the heavy stack of forms she had to read through and sign. James looked at her, bent over the paperwork and oblivious to him. He wondered how exactly this happened, he was cooking dinner for her. The thing he swore he wouldn't do. He covered the revelation with sarcasm.

"So glad you approve. I want you to know tomorrow it's your turn to cook. Oh, and when you're finished with your homework..." He dropped the notes he took on Burton's security arrangements down on the counter in front of her.

She picked it up like a kid with candy and grinned. "This is perfect. We're going for a drive tonight. Can you borrow your neighbors car for an hour?"

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He thought when she said 'tonight' she meant at three in the morning, what he thought of as the skulking hour that nefarious deeds were accomplished at. James was surprised when she promptly cleaned up the kitchen after supper and changed into a tight black dress, complete with heels and make-up that hid her stitches.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She arched an eyebrow at him. "We're going to plant a bug in his car, obviously. Get your jacket, we have to look the part."

Still not understanding where she was going with this, he did as she asked.

They went across town to Burton's flat and pulled into the parking garage. "He parks on level three, pull in right next to him." She directed him firmly.

"It's not even eleven o'clock!"

"So? He's not going anywhere. It'll only take about two minutes for me to put the bug into his electrical system."

"What if he comes out?" Breaking into a car, illegal wiretapping, trespassing, he tried to catalog all the laws they were breaking. Was borrowing a car to break the law illegal? It probably was.

Christine had a different perspective. "No guts, no glory!"

With a really bad feeling, he slowly cruised until he recognized Burton's little white sedan. "Don't worry so much!" Christine patted him on the cheek and then stepped out. She pulled a little lock pick set that he had picked up at the hardware store the day before out of her purse and had the drivers side door open in less than a minute. She slid into his car and looked like a woman digging for her makeup bag under the seat before a hot date.

Now James understood what the black dress and suit coat was needed for. If they got caught by anyone except Burton they could explain it away.

Whoever heard of a couple in fancy dress breaking into a four year old car?

Only someone with James's view could see her pull some wires down from under the steering column. She snipped and twisted her little listening device into the wires and with the application of some electrical tape to ensure the whole thing stayed together, she slid it all back under the dash and bounced out of Burton's car. She even locked it behind her.

"Mission accomplished." She gloated at James.

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The next morning she was again up before him, and again had made coffee.

"Morning." James greeted her and scratched his chest idly. He had given up wearing the undershirt. It was his house, if she didn't want to look at his chest then she could look away. He still wore the pajama pants, he wasn't going to be comfortable wandering around in his boxers around her...ever.

She returned the greeting without looking up and kept working on her paperwork. Since she wasn't paying attention to him, he reached out and subtly touched her sleeve.

She was paying more attention than he thought. "What?"

"Nothing." He tried to brush it off. Those blue pajamas were silk! He made a note to have a chat with Abby about the definition of 'essentials'. Christine was still looking at him funny for the unusual contact so he tried to cover it with a question. "How do we listen to that bug you planted?"

"We call it. We'll have to take turns keeping him under surveillance. This is the number," she pointed to a piece of paper that she had written all the phone numbers on. She'd hidden it between the bottom two plates in the cabinet right after finishing the listening devices. "Put it in your phone as a second number for some name that's already in there."

"All right, then what?"

"We'll have to name them, and when Burton moves around we'll have switch which ones we're listening to. Thank heaven for ear buds. Just call the number and leave the line open. Yours doesn't blink or something if you're on a call, does it?"

"No and what are we going to name them? Sid and Nancy and Jeff?"

"I was thinking more like annoying, irritation, blasted, dratted, insufferable and what was that other word- oh yes, obnoxious."

"What?" Clearly, James's coffee wasn't helping his brain keep up with her.

"The one in his car is 'annoying'. So lets say you know he's in his car but you can't listen in, so you text or call me and use the word annoying. Then I'll call the bug and listen. Got it? Do I need to get sock puppets out?"

"You don't have to get snotty with me woman. I hadn't spent my whole career planting illegal devices. This is all Chinese to me."

Christine made a note on her paper before gracing him with an answer.

"The best code words and phrases can be used in a conversation without anyone listening realizing. We've got nearly two decades of history fighting with each other. We can insult each other in front of the whole ARC and Minister Whitehall and no one would bat an eye."

He sipped his coffee and regarded her with suspicious eyes. "Why are you so good at this business?"

"Classified."

"Bullshit."

"Fine. It's not classified. I wanted to be a field agent alright?"

"Why didn't you?" She was certainly brilliant and ruthless enough.

Now she looked at him like he was daft. "I'm allergic to everything under the sun. Field agents can't have a weakness like that. Hell, aspirin gives me a rash."

"So you went into the office instead? Using all your extra skills? No wonder you got promoted as fast as you did."

"I earned each and every promotion!" She hesitated and gave small smile, "some I earned differently from others..."

"By destroying whoever was in your way?"

Completely unrepentantly she actually giggled. "It's all just a big dance. They should have danced faster."

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On the way into work they tested the bug in Burton's car and didn't discover anything except they agreed he had horrible taste in music. Their discussion about early rock and roll took place via a tiny note pad Christine had. It seemed they were going to spend a lot of time writing back and forth.

Earlier she had assured him that if there was a bug in his car she wouldn't find it because _Burton_ was a professional and _Burton_ used real listening devices, not cludged together school project bugs. The school project bug was currently subjecting James to engine noise, infernal wailing guitars and howling voices. He was getting a headache.

They had done a very effective job of ignoring each other as they passed through security and headed down the lift. They went their separate way once the doors opened.

Christine went to Burton's office. His secretary waved her into his office. "He's waiting on you." Christine breezed past her with a quick nod. Two weeks wasn't nearly enough time to flip the secretary so she wasn't even going to bother.

"Good morning," she greeted Burton, "I got one in his office, his phone and his briefcase."

"Good girl, so this won't take you that long?"

She ignored him referring to her as 'girl'. "No, it shouldn't. Why are you in such a rush to get rid of him?"

"He's so limited in his thinking. Take that mammoth for instance. There are several very public research projects attempting to clone mammoths. We could breed the live one with elephants and present the offspring as the first generation of cloned mammoths. Zoos would pay millions for a specimen."

Christine didn't believe him for a minute. There was far more at stake here than a few million dollars. "How could you capitalize on anomalies?"

He only smiled at her, "Don't worry about that now. Worry about finding a way to get rid of Lester."

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Since she didn't really have a job she could do openly, Christine wandered around under the guise of familiarizing herself with the ARC. She found Connor Temple in a secluded lab far away in a section of the sprawling underground base that was otherwise reserved for storage rooms.

He was bent intently over a large oval device that looked a bit like the worlds largest egg beater on laying on its side. "What's that?" She asked when it became apparent he wasn't going to notice her in the doorway.

"It's classified." He stammered out. "Only Mr. Burton's supposed to be in here. I'm gonna have to ask you to leave," He tried to smile at her, "sorry."

His posture was a bit like a kitten ordering a police dog around. She arched her eyebrow at him. "Are you aware that I'm replacing Mr. Burton in a few weeks?"

He looked horrified. "No. He didn't say anything-"

"Does he tell you everything? Are you best mates?" She managed to sound mildly interested while checking out the lab. "So why don't you show me around?" There was a lot of discrete security cameras in this lab.

"Uh...I don't know...I have to talk to him first okay?" Connor sounded like a kicked puppy. "That's fine." She walked around to his side of the bench to get a look at the thing he was fiddling with from the other side. "I would hate to make you uncomfortable."

With another curious look around she left, noting the areas the cameras covered. Christine stopped into every lab she could find to compare security, the last of which was hot and humid. A green flying creature swooped in front of her before landing on the counter and chirping pleasantly.

"Rex!" Abby walked over to him and picked him up like a baby. "You're not supposed to be in this side. Hello Christine." The blonde carried Rex over to another door and opened it. He flew out of her arms into the little habitat she had set up for him.

"The infamous Rex." Christine said by way of greeting. "I wanted to tell you that you can drive me to the doctors office tomorrow, if you still want to."

"I'd love to. Was it hard to talk Lester into letting me have the morning off?"

"No. Well, no more than talking him into anything is. I played the girl card and said I wanted someone to hold my hand. It was truly pathetic, but he agreed. Looked a bit horrified at the same time. I may have laid it on a little thick."

Abby laughed. "How are you feeling?"

"Good. Better than before. I was curious what Connor's doing squirreled away amongst all the store rooms?"

Abby's face clouded up like a storm cloud worthy of the title storm of the century. "That's his special lab. He won't tell me what he does in there. He's turned into a prat about it."

"Really? I thought he worked for Lester?"

"He does, but he also works for Burton. I don't know what Burton's got him working on, something with computers. Lester doesn't really approve but Burton controls the family checkbook." Abby gave a 'what can you do'? sort of shrug.

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After she left Abby's creature lab Christine sent a quick text to James. 'Abby is taking me to the doctor tomorrow. Act grumpy about it. Call me in twenty minutes with a plausible reason I have to come to your office right away. Delete this.' He would probably have plenty to say about her giving his people days off this evening. It would liven up the dinner conversation.

She continued her walk about the building before returning to Burton's office. "I've got a few questions." She said without preamble as she sat down, "What's Temple doing down in Siberia?"

"He's doing some private research for me." Burton said smoothly, "I'll brief you on his project later. How's your project coming?"

"I'll need to get a look at Lester's financial records. He keeps them in his home office but I need him out of the house for a few hours. He'd actually got a decent safe and it will take me a while to break into it. Can you get him out in the evening for some reason?"

"Of course." Burton leaned back in his chair, "Why didn't you break into it the whole entire week you were there by yourself?"

"I was injured!" Christine protested before explaining, "Also, I didn't really have a reason besides casual snooping." She sighed, "He set up a motion sensor in his office when I was there alone. I nearly set it off before I spotted it. He's taken it down but I'm never alone in there."

"Why don't I run you over there during the day? That would be easier."

"That could work..." she pretended to think about it, "unless he calls me for something. He's been needing my signature at random times."

At exactly the most perfect moment, her phone rang. "Speak of the devil." She flipped her phone around so Burton could read who it was before she answered it. "Hello?" Taking a chance James wasn't going to say something stupid, she flipped it onto speaker phone. He didn't disappoint.

"Where are you? I need you to come take some photographs for your new documents." James sounded huffy. "I haven't got all day."

Christine arched an eyebrow at Burton while she answered James, "I'm in Burton's office. Don't get your knickers in a knot."

"Hurry up." He actually hung up on her.

"You see how he is? Jackass. Ordering me about." She pretended to be annoyed at him. "This is what he's like. Just get him out in the evening for some reason for a few hours and maybe we'll both be rid of him."

Burton look smug. "I'll come up with something."

Christine kept her own smugness fully to herself as she left his office.

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James waited in his office, trying to figure out how to make his web-cam that he usually kept turned off take pictures. He knew it could. It had to be one of these feature somewhere. It was just a futile exercise to try and take his mind off how incredibly bossy that woman was.

She gave Abby the day off tomorrow, and she was going to need his charge card to pay the doctor and he still hadn't worked up the nerve to see what she spent the last time she had it. Suddenly, a solution to that problem occurred to him. It was so obvious, he didn't know why he didn't think of it sooner.

The object of his worries breezed into his office without knocking, again. This was turning into a habit. She closed the door behind her and started scribbling frantically on that notepad. He started complaining, "Don't you ever knock? Were you born in a barn?"

"I can't help it if you're half deaf." She played his complaint off and flipped the notepad around. 'You're brilliant!'

That was unexpected. She could see the wariness in his face and started to elaborate. 'That phone call came at the perfect moment. And he could be listening now.' She was really getting good at writing one thing and saying another at the same time. "You wanted me to take some pictures?"

"Yes, sit here." He got up from his desk gestured for her to take his spot. "We can use the webcam. I'll need a new photo for your drivers license, ARC badge and passport."

"We can only take one picture now. Which one are you doing first?"

He didn't have to fake his annoyance. James had been rather proud of his spur of the moment excuse. "What the hell do you mean we can only take one picture?"

"Nobody is every wearing the same clothes in all their documents! That just screams fake id. Haven't you even seen the Great Escape?"

"Blasted woman. We're doing the drivers license now. Then I don't have to chauffeur you around."

"Am I getting a car also?"

"Just as quick as you can sign a note."

"I don't even have a bank account!"

"You will. Tomorrow after your doctors appointment, I'm having Abby take you over to the bank. I've got some petty cash you can deposit. It should be enough for you to get a line of credit and you can parley that into a car. You will be paying it back. It's certainly not a gift."

"I haven't even got my first check yet!"

"So take that up with Burton. He's the one signing it." James sounded most unsympathetic, "Ask the doctor if he can switch your medication to something that doesn't leave you spilling state secrets. Then I can have you out of my hair."

While this conversation was going on he was leaning over her shoulder, still trying to figure out how to make the webcam take a picture. Christine got tired of waiting on his computer incompetence and firmly put her hand over his on the mouse.

"It's here." She highlighted the proper menu, "I've been dead for three years and I know how to work this. What's your excuse again?" It was oddly intimate as she maneuvered the mouse through the appropriate menus, pressing gently down on his index finger to double click.

"Smile." Christine took the picture and it popped up on the screen, "Let's just delete this one." He looked incredibly bemused leaning over her shoulder as she deftly took over his computer. It would have definitely blown their cover.

James pulled his hand out from under hers and stepped back while she took another picture. She didn't like this one either and promptly deleted it. With a sudden movement she pulled some of her hair pins out and let her hair down. Confused he asked, "What are you doing?"

"I don't want stitches in my photo." It was the work of a moment to adjust her hair so it covered the cut on her forehead and down her cheek. "That dates it. This is much better." Christine took a third photo and was happy with it. He watched as she opened a program he didn't know he had and cropped it to just show her face and shoulders. "Where's the drivers license?"

"I'm emailing the photo to the home office. They'll produce it and we can pick it up tomorrow morning. They were expecting three photos."

"So we'll leave early and take the other two at your flat." Christine tapped his hand when she said leave. He was bright enough to catch the hint. "I don't know what else Burton wants me to do today."

"By all means, go ask your boss if you can go home early." He emphasized the words your boss with a smirk. "We wouldn't want to upset him and get you sacked for slacking. That would be a _terrible_ tragedy. I might shed a tear for you. I hear the Dollar store is hiring, perhaps you could get a position as a cashier?"

"Irritating man."

Burton, listening in on the wall bug wondered how she didn't murder him in his sleep. He was reasonably certain she could make it look like natural death...but knowing her she'd probably make it something really embarrassing, like auto-erotic asphyxiation. That put a mental picture into his brain that nothing short of bleach could remove. He was still trying to keep from gagging when she came back to his office a few minutes later and asked for the rest of the afternoon off to get her documents made.

Please review. Just a few words really encourages me.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

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They got back to the flat and Christine changed her blouse to take the second photo and again for the third one. She even did something subtle with her hair and make-up so it looked as if they were taken ages apart instead of two hours.

They left the briefcase in the office with them so if Burton was listening he wouldn't get suspicious. The sniping and bickering was getting to be a bit amusing for James and Christine. He offered to give her a reference to a local daycare if Burton sacked her. Christine bit the back of her hand to keep from laughing at his long and expansive monologue at her future career in child minding, assuming her natural mothering instinct wasn't to eat the children.

Of course, she had to sound really angry and pissed off at him for her side of the conversation. It was a trial to shoot a snotty remark back and then try not to giggle as the 'fight' got more and more ridiculous. Then he expanded it from watching children into potential surrogate motherhood, one stop shopping really for some unlucky couple. Poor child would probably be born with horns and a forked tail. By this point they were nearly shouting, for Burton's benefit but actually grinned at each other as each tried to outdo the other with insults.

Finally, even with the costume and make-up changes they were done with the pictures, and the false argument.

James emailed the three pictures to his contact in the records department. Christine evidently got bored while he was doing that and wandered off. James punched the telly onto a really tedious financial advice program for Burton's entertainment before he went looking for the feisty brunette.

He found her in the kitchen taking inventory. "What are you doing?" He asked. He'd already deposited his phone in his bedroom so they could speak openly.

"Trying to decide what to do for dinner, obviously. It is my turn to cook, isn't it?" She was rummaging in the back of the cabinets as she talked. So she wasn't going to bring up his comments about her obvious child-bearing hips. That was for the best. The remark that she could then supplement her income as a wet nurse was probably best forgotten anyway.

"Um...yes." He was quite surprised, "I didn't think you'd actually do it."

She laughed. "You sound so shocked. I can cook."

"Of course. Never doubted you for a second. Why do you need Abby to take you tomorrow? I thought you were taking a cab?"

"I was, but this way it will give me some more time to feed her disinformation. Were you serious about the bank?"

"Yes. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. I guess it wouldn't have mattered, you need a photo ID to open an account and you won't have one until tomorrow morning."

She started assembling random ingredients on the counter, "What's this petty cash you're turning loose of ?"

"It's a check from me. For ten thousand. Just the start of what I owe you. I'd appreciate it if you didn't let on to Abby. I have a reputation to maintain." James brooded on how if this ever got out his carefully cultivated reputation as a sarcastic hardass was going to be in tatters.

Christine stopped her rummaging through the kitchen and turned to him, "Oh that reminds me, in the next few days Burton is going to come up with some lame excuse to get you out of here in the evening."

"Why?"

"To give me the opportunity to break into your office safe and rummage through your private records."

James pointed out, "I don't have an office safe."

"If Burton asks then you do. Just hem and haw and make him sell his stupid excuse. It'll probably be a meeting or something."

"All right. Can I assume that you have a nefarious plan to go with this?"

"While he thinks he's distracting you, I'll be planting our other bugs in his house."

"I thought there was more to it." This woman was always full of angles. It made him wonder what else she was currently plotting on.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The next day Abby picked up Christine at eight. She was waiting eagerly for her day out, with James's bank card and a check tucked away in her purse for ten thousand pounds. "Don't lose that," he told her gruffly when he gave it to her earlier, "I'm not writing you another one."

"I'm not going to lose it!" She replied as she studied it. If someone had told her a month ago he was going to be paying her huge sums of money she would have laughed herself silly.

Abby knocking on the door distracted her from thoughts of how surprisingly civilized James was capable of being. He didn't have to give her anything that he got from mum, but he was bound and determined to repay her. Probably so he wouldn't owe her anything. As if. If anything, she owed him so much more beyond gratitude.

Christine scooped up her purse and slipped out the door. "Abby! How are you?"

"Thrilled to have a day off without Connor hanging about. He's really getting obsessive about that project of his. He fiddles with it at home, he goes in to work on the weekends," the younger woman complained on the way to her car, "I'm about to grab him by the ear and give him a good shake! You know it's been weeks since we've...you know."

"Man trouble?" Christine was sympathetic. "I got the same problem, without the sex perks. Living with James is driving me batty. Last night he said I had a wonderful future career as a surrogate mother 'cause of my hips! But I have a slight consolation prize right now." She whipped out his bank card to show Abby. "Lunch is on me!"

Abby laughed loudly as they headed to the home office to get her new documents. "Child bearing hips? He actually said that? I know a really expensive French place on High Street...they do excellent fois gras sampler for lunch!"

They kept chatting as they swung by the Home Office and picked up her new identity cards. Christine admired the pictures and Abby couldn't believe they'd all been taken a few minutes apart. They had to hurry to get to the doctor appointment.

At the doctors office they didn't have to wait very long before the nurse ushered them back to an exam room. Abby offered to wait in the lobby but Christine brushed it off. "I might actually need someone to hold my hand. Getting stitches out sucks." Abby nodded sympathetically. She'd had stitches before also.

Christine reached out for Abby's hand as the doctor started on her face, with a gentle snip and tug he one by one removed the stitches around her face before moving to the ones on her arms.

"That wasn't so bad was it?" Abby asked when the doctor was finished. "Oh, we're only half done." Christine told her grimly as she undid the ties on the side of the hospital gown. Abby gasped when she saw the three parallel line drawn from just under her bra down to her right hip. Another three ran right across her stomach from one side to the other. It was obvious to Abby that the creature had grabbed at her and she had managed to jump away. If the creature had been any closer it would have disemboweled her.

"I didn't know about that." Abby said, startled. "There was so much blood..."

"Did you see the accident?" The doctor asked as he started removing that criss-cross of stitches. Abby was abruptly shaken back into the unclassified world where words like 'Anomaly' and 'Future Predator' had no meaning whatsoever. "Um, yes. It was horrible. You're so lucky to be alive."

"Oh I know." Christine said and then let a little female vanity push to the surface. "How badly will I scar?"

"These will fade, I think they'll always be visible but they've healed really well. You can tie your gown back again." The doctor flipped out the stirrups and lifted her legs into it. He pushed her gown up nearly her hips and Abby saw more lines of stitches running up the fronts and sides of her legs. One really nasty cluster of stitches looked as if someone had grabbed her upper thigh and twisted the muscle around in a circle.

Concerned, Abby asked her, "How many stitches did you have?"

"I don't know. A couple of hundred?"

"I can't believe you've been getting around as well as you have." She was amazed. "I'm on good drugs!" Christine giggled. "Where do you want to go after this?"

"Lester mentioned something about the bank?"

"That's right!" That check was burning a hole in her purse, "I've got to open an account."

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At the bank Abby stayed waiting in the lobby while Christine signed all the paperwork and negotiated a line of credit on her new ten thousand pound deposit. "Wanna go look at cars?" She asked Abby when she finally emerged. "If I can find something cheap then I won't have to depend on James to ferry me around anymore."

Abby's eyes widened and she grinned, "I love looking at cars!"

The bargain lot wasn't exactly what Abby had in mind, but cheap manky cars were cheap manky cars for a reason. They were cheap, because they were manky. They browsed about for a while before going to a late lunch of expensive French delicacies and then to the shopping center. She had her own bank card now but not abusing James's would be totally out of character. He had to pay for that dig about her hips somehow.

The whole time Abby complained about Connor's unromantic nature and Christine complained about James's...existence. She even tried to get Abby to gossip about him but there was no dirt to be found that way but it was interesting in a detached way to note that Abby was surprised at some of the highly personal insults he had tossed her way. The younger blonde woman had obviously never heard him be that deliberately callous to someone before.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Meanwhile the object of their discussion was trying to make sense of the conflicting budget request forms that were coming out of his security department. It seemed that Matt and Becker were feuding again. Or even scarier, conspiring to overthrow a small nation.

Burton making his usual annoying midday drop-in visit momentarily distracted James from trying to figure out why they thought he could possibly justify an armored personal carrier modified with antitank rockets. Judging by the seemingly random items on a different form it would then be modified to shoot a massive EM pulse. That fact that Matt didn't come out and just say that was making him very suspicious of what gun-nut Captain Becker had talked Matt into building under the table.

"James! How are you?" Burton sat down without being invited which he usually didn't bother to do on his little afternoon work-interrupting jaunts. "How's work?" The fake cheerfulness grated on James's nerves. "Tedious." He snapped. "Did you need something? I find that the budget forms tend to take up all my attention." He was such a liar.

"Yes actually," Burton hesitated and looked for all the world like a highly embarrassed man. "I'm in a bit of spot of trouble."

This would be the lame excuse to get him out of the house then. James leaned back and prepared to make him work for it.

"What is it?"

"It's personal." Burton said, "It's my sister."

"Yes?"

"She's in town visiting and I promised I'd take her to the show but I simply don't have time."

"So? She's a big girl. Why are you whining at me about this?"

"It's complicated." Burton wondered how elaborate he'd have to make this before James bought it. "She's just been divorced-"

James leaned back in seat and his eyes widened, "Oh no, you are not setting me up with your sister!"

"Ew!" That was Burton's mature outburst, "No, no, no I was just going to ask if you could take my place at the show! I know she won't want to go by herself and she was so looking forward to it." Burton looked desperate. "I'd owe you a favor."

This wasn't even a believable reason get him out of the house. When James was ten he could have come up with a better distraction. He said flatly, "No."

"Please?" Burton nearly begged and tried to make it sound as easy as possible. "All you'd have to do is sit there and watch Hamlet."

Lester was completely unmoved. "I despise Hamlet, and recently divorced woman."

"I'd owe you a really big favor."

"Just tell her you'll take her some other time, grow a pair." James sneered at the other man.

Burton didn't need his corporate spy sense to be tingling to know he was losing this one. He played his trump card. "I'll move Johnson to the office."

James gave a low whistle. "I thought she was replacing you here?"

"Not for months. Really, after the first of the month I'll move her to the home office and you won't see her again until summer." That would be the first of the month after her deadline to get rid of him. Some favor. James sighed loudly, if he didn't know what he knew than that bribe would probably work.

"For that I just might entertain the notion of subjecting myself to Hamlet and your sister." At Burton's glare James amended his remark, "who I'm sure is a perfectly lovely woman, who's current hatred of all things male is purely temporary."

"My sister doesn't hate all things male."

"Philip just trust me on this, all recently divorced woman hate all men."

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Thanks for reading, please review! It really makes my day to know that someone likes this! I do cartwheels around the room. Really.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

A/N: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for all the lovely reviews! I do a happy dance bouncing off the walls whenever I get one. I'm so happy I'm not the only one that thinks this has potential. grins. We're getting close to that deadline she's working against and slippery Burton isn't dropping many useful hints...

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That evening James walked into his flat to an absolutely delightful smell and the sizzle of pan frying meat. He dropped his phone and briefcase in his bedroom and gave Burton a very poor cable news show to listen to if he was listening before he ventured into the kitchen. Christine was standing there barefoot flipping a pork chop in a pan. It seemed she had treated herself to a pedicure.

He made a mental bet with himself whose money she had used for it.

"Hello." He greeted her pleasantly, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She glanced over at him, "To getting stitches out! The iching has cut down to almost nothing. I feel fabulous right now."

He came up behind her and inspected to other two pots on the stove. Carrots and mashed potatoes. "That looks wonderful."

"It's going to taste wonderful. How was your day chasing dinosaurs?"

"Easy." He settled into one of the bar stools. "No anomalies, but Burton did come up with his reason to get me out of the house. It's even lamer than you hinted it might be."

"Oh?" She was interested, "Do tell."

James relayed his odd conversation with Burton while she made pan gravy. He was so take up in how weird Burton's excuse was that he didn't even really notice that Christie fixed them both plates before joining him at the bar. "Thank you," he said as she passed him some silverware. "What do you think?"

"I think he's needlessly complicating things by involving someone else so there's two possibilities, possibility one is that she's involved and he trusts her not to screw this up or let something slip."

"That's about what I had figured." He took a bite, "This is delicious."

"Thank you," She dug into her own plate, "the other possibility is that she's really his sister and she really is divorced and she won't know anything. In which case you can plan on a boring night."

"I don't know which of those two possibilities scares me more." James commented.

After they ate he cleaned up the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher before relaxing in front of the tv. She was puttering around doing laundry. He saw her carrying the ironing board into her room, along with the can of starch.

Idly, he flipped channels for a while before deciding that the telly wasn't going to be worth watching tonight. He might as well just go to bed. James walked past Christine's open door on the way to his bedroom and stuck his head in to say good night.

She was standing in the middle of the room with the telly on a romantic movie that he vaguely recognized playing in the background. Something with Meg Ryan in France. Christine glanced up at him when he popped in.

"I'm going to bed, goodnight."

"Goodnight James." She replied without really paying attention to him. Most of her attention was on the movie. He went to leave when the shirt she was working on caught his attention. He hesitated and wondered if he should even ask. He just couldn't resist. "I'm not complaining or anything, but why are you ironing my shirt?"

"I'm not ironing your shirt." Christine said, looking down. She studied it and held it up for a second. It was a muted plaid shirt. It was vaguely familiar. She hadn't had any of her clothes very long, none of them were more than vaguely familiar. The slight smile and the open, amused expression on his face convinced her to look again.

Then she realized why it was familiar. She had seen him wearing it earlier in the week. "I am ironing your shirt." Her lips curved up in a tiny smile as she said ruefully, "You must have left it in the dryer or something." Oh well. She shrugged, "I'm nearly done with it anyway."

Christine caught his eye for the briefest instant, "Don't get used to it."

Now he was really grinning, "Wouldn't dream of it."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The next morning he was up before her and started the coffee. He tossed some bacon into a pan and mixed up some eggs. He was preoccupied with thoughts of work, overthrowing Burton and why on _earth_ had she finished ironing his shirt after she realized it was his.

It was almost a relief when she joined him. "Morning." He greeted her. She gave what he had learned was her customary pre-caffeine grumble. It could have been 'good morning', if he really used his imagination and healthy dose of optimism. Then again it could have been something else entirely.

Fortunately it didn't take long for her to get going once she had that first cup.

It was barely six. "Why're you up so early?" Christine hadn't even bothered to brush her hair, it was still mussed from her pillow. It gave her a pleasantly rumpled look that was more than a touch cute. Not that he'd say that. James tried to focus back on why he was awake this early.

"I don't know." He confessed, "I was worried about everything I suppose."

"About tonight? It'll be a piece of cake." She was dismissive, "Your goal is to keep her out, her goal is to keep you out."

"What about you then? How are you going to plant those bugs if he's home?" James shifted some bacon and eggs onto a plate for her. He even got the syrup down out of the cabinet since he was much closer before making a plate for himself.

"I'll do it while he's there." She was a bit dismissive, "Oh, I can't put them in the wall sockets but there's plenty of power sources in a house. If he leaves me alone for three minutes I can plant at least one, maybe two."

He raised an eyebrow at her, and not solely at the amount of syrup she was drowning her breakfast in. "So you're just going to pop over to say hi?"

"No." She was splitting her attention between food, coffee and him. There wasn't any energy left for masking her emotions. She seemed a bit tired, just a little worn down around the edges. It was probably a good thing it was Friday.

"I'm going to call him all excited that I found your bank records for your Swiss accounts." She looked at him and mused, "Do you think that's too stereotypical? Maybe I should go with the Bahamas. That might throw him off a little."

"What?" He was lost again, as usual. "I haven't got any Swiss accounts."

"You do now!" She sounded marginally cheerful, "I'm going to convince him that you've got money hidden away and leave it vague enough that he won't know if you're a spy like him or if you're embezzling funds from the ARC."

"Why?"

"Try to keep up James," She admonished him with humor glittering in her dark honey colored eyes. "It will keep him off balance. He won't be sure of the best way to have you removed until he has more details, details that won't be forthcoming. It will buy us some time. We've already wasted a week."

"You can really do that? Make up fake financial statements? One call to the bank and that story's blown."

"No, it won't. Not the banks I'm going to use. The accounts are real enough," a legacy of her time at MI-6, she always had a fabulous memory for numbers, "but these type of banks pride themselves on providing privacy. They won't admit to somebody on the phone if the account number is real or false or who's account it really is." She chattered away at him about banking privacy practices and all the time consuming things Burton was going to have go through to circumvent them.

James looked at her looking smug, sipping coffee and demolishing breakfast.

"I think," he said deliberately enough that she looked up at him, "that if you _were_ a field agent we might have the British empire back again."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At work it was easy. They'd gotten used to walking like they loathed each other. There was a knack to it, like the other person had contaminated the very air they passed through and that space had to be avoided. They were both giving off extremely hostile 'I hate you' vibes as they entered the operations floor. For the staff it wasn't worth a second glance. They were used to it.

James tried to get as much paperwork done as possible so Monday wouldn't be as much of a nightmare. Christine was doing the same thing in her office, except she was starting from a blank page and filing in row after row with memorized bank routing numbers conveying transfer after transfer from James's – and now her – bank to the parts of the world known for their belligerent attitude towards snoopers.

Good luck getting the finer details on that! The First National Bank of the Bahamas was ignoring a UN order to release the details of certain accounts and Bank Swiss wasn't far behind them in hiding behind national privacy laws. Burton's puppet masters didn't have a chance. If they did...well...then she didn't have chance. But that was a risk she'd have to take.

After lunch she spent a little time trying to get a bit more information out of Burton about Connor's secret project. She could tell her Abby-Connor-Burton circuit of information was working when he inquired after how Lester treated her when they were alone. His eyes flicked down for the barest of seconds to her hips. Or he might have just been listening in through the briefcase.

Christine vented for a while and then in a most fortuitous occasion, Burton had her start filling out some transfer of authority forms when he was called away to deal with Abby invading Connor's lab. He actually had a biometric scanner on the cameras in that lab and it pinged his computer once Abby walked through the door. Christine didn't even twitch when he locked his computer and hurried out, muttering about nosy girlfriends.

He hadn't reacted that way when she went in there. Either the scanners weren't installed or he didn't really care if she saw what was in there. There were several intriguing possibilities but she couldn't chase any of them down just yet. She had bugs to plant.

Her trusty Swiss army knife had a screwdriver in it. She had one bug in the wall socket and wired to the plug in under a minute. The second one went into the landline phone that was on the desk. She was finished in a little less than two minutes and calmly went back to working on the paperwork. The desk was calling her like a siren to search it but with a mighty bit of will power, she resisted. If he caught her or realized she had rummaged through this desk then he might get suspicious...check for bugs...she'd be busted and they would have just blown their chance. It was tempting, truly tempting but she kept herself on her side of the desk and behaved. It was nearly twenty minutes before he returned, in a truly foul mood.

"Trouble in paradise?" She inquired sweetly as she stood up to leave.

"Abby's a damned menace. Temple is doing important work for me and every time she gets near it his focus gets all cocked up." Burton bitched at her. "After Lester put her on your list. I can't do proper experiments on the creatures with her around. She standing in the way of progress. Damned woman." He seemed to get control of himself. "Are you finished with that paperwork?"

"Yes. Just finished. I can't wait until this evening." She tossed him a slightly sultry smile on her way out of the office. He felt a slight twitch in his groin as she slightly brushed him on her way out, leaving a hint of perfume in her wake. He watched her go and entertained some purely selfish thoughts. After Lester was gone, after all the people standing in the way of what he really wanted to do were gone...maybe...they could mix a little pleasure with business. He made a bet with himself that she would be an absolute minx once he got her naked.

Well aware of how his attention had wandered she put a little extra wiggle into her step until she was out of his sight. '_Men were so easy'_, she thought to herself on her way back to her office to cover her tracks for her extra curricular activities for today.

Christine printed off multiple copies of all the documents she'd need before deleting all the files she was in and trashing the recycle bin. She went a step further and went into the system files to purge the word program she had downloaded just for this occasion. A few more minutes covering her electronic trail gave her a little more peace of mind before she did her usual late afternoon breeze into James office to pick up the latest fight just where they'd left off.

They bickered all the way out of his office, across the ARC and out into the car park before they could relax a little. James turned the car radio on so they wouldn't have to talk on the way home. It was getting a little tedious to constantly be spatting. Not to mention boring. She was really having to grasp for fresh insults and frankly that was not a problem she'd ever had before.

Once they were back in the house she showed him the documents she had spent a large portion of the day making. They looked as if James had just printed off his account balance and recent transactions on his home computer. His eyes bugged out when he saw the amounts. "Four hundred thousand pounds? One hundred and ninety thousand pounds? Christine there's," he added it up quickly, "Six million pounds, give or take, just on this one page! He'll never believe it's real."

"Sure he will. He won't dare believe it's not! He won't have any idea what you are after he sees this."

James echoed her doubtfully. "What I am? What am I?"

She started naming off all the possibilities she was going to dangle before Burton's excessively large nose. "Spy? Traitor? Really rich guy just evading taxes? Inside trader? Corrupt? Embezzler? Some special arrangement with the minister? He won't know. He can't find out of sure without either tipping you off he's looking or me providing him more information, which I won't be doing."

"Christine, that's brilliant."

"I know!" She hesitated for the briefest instant, "But there's a bit of a catch."

He was instantly on his guard. "What?"

"I hate to do this, but I don't see a way around it. I have to see your real financial records and give him some of those too, so he can confirm that some of this is accurate. Otherwise he might dig enough to figure out it's all false." Christine said all that it a rush, embarrassed that he might think she wanted to know his bank balance for her own sordid curiosity.

His brow furrowed as he thought about it, then he sighed. "I suppose. Let me show you."

James led her into the office and opened the file cabinet where he kept his old bank statements along with his investment paperwork. "It's all in this cabinet. Older things are in the one next to it. You can do whatever you need to do."

This was an amazing amount of trust he was giving to her and she appreciated it tremendously. He left her to it while he went to get ready for his not-date with Burton's alleged sister.

Christine started with the file labeled 'Checking' first. He seemed to keep about five thousand in that account. She compared a few month's statements side by side. The checks he wrote were in similar amounts clearing on similar dates. She could pick out the utilities running month to month. There was the occasional odd check here and there, but that happened to everyone, no matter how tightly they budgeted.

She ran off a copy to use as proof he was a meticulous planner. It was when she started digging into the investment folders that the knowledge shook her. The money he had received from her mother had been split and invested so many different ways it was impossible to consolidate it again. Just like he had told her.

No, the surprising thing was he already had money. A lot of money. He was easily a millionaire. If he liquidated all of his assets he would be a multimillionaire, even after the taxes were paid. The thing was he had everything tied up in stocks or bonds or CD's and he couldn't lay his hands on much cash money because his cash was busy making him money.

She did some quick calculations as she figured out his investment strategy. In seven years when most of it was mature and he could pull interest off of it he was going to be cashing checks that ranged from ten thousand to more than fifty thousands pounds in interest every quarter. He had enough diversified investments that if something crashed he was still sitting pretty.

He could retire if he wanted, making more from investments every month than most people made in a year. The man was brilliant, methodical and very careful. Something about those traits was drawing her interest. Christine actually leaned back and tried to work it out. He was capable of being an absolute bastard when he wanted...but when it really mattered he wasn't.

He had left her alone with all his financial records. All his account numbers. All his investments. His retirement. Why? The realization that he really trusted her hit her like a punch in the gut. She let her breath out in a whoosh as she realized that she was now more intrigued by a man that hadn't made a single move towards her than any of her previous boyfriends. _Why _was the thought he was more than financially stable without her mother's money a turn on? She had never been especially drawn to rich men before. _'I don't have time to worry about this.'_

She scrubbed her face with her hands and she dragged her attention back to the here and now, not the really odd relationship she was now in. Destroying Burton. That was the important thing, destroying Burton.

She copied a bit of this and a bit of that, from the larger accounts and investments just to make James seem like a major player only pretending to be a little fish. He was so good at that. He never gave off a vibe that he was loaded. A little prissy maybe, with a taste for nicer things but not up to his eyeballs in money. '_Focus Christine. Focus.' _She sternly reminded herself and went back to assembling the packet for Burton. A large chunk of the money he inherited was hers originally..._**Focus**_! He was insisting on paying it back..._**Focus!**_

When she was finished she flipped through it all again and ruffled it a little so it didn't see like it was fresh off the printer. Once the original was suitably rumpled she copied it all for Burton's benefit. After that was finished she went to change into something more comfortable for the second part of the evening and she firmly pushed any thoughts of attraction out of her mind. That would totally mess up the plan of attack she had chosen for Burton.

When she emerged from her room a short while later James was sitting in the living room. He gave a low whistle when she walked out wearing a very low-cut dark red dress that had a full skirt that twirled and shimmered when she walked. The dress combined with her naturally dark hair made for a stunning combination.

"You like?" Taken in an uncharacteristic fit of girlyness, she spun around so he could see the effect of the skirt when it billowed out, then fell back in snug against her waist and ass.

He arched an eyebrow as he admired her...strategy. "Aren't you taking this Mata Hari thing a bit far?"

"Don't be silly! I want him to be eager for me to come over, and not suggest that he comes back over here."

James stood up and walked over to her, openly checking her out. "What if he doesn't want to leave?" She met his eyes boldly, without asking if he liked what he saw. It was pretty obvious he did. "I'm just pointing out, what if he decides to hang about and help you with your ransacking of my office?" He tried to pretend that they weren't hesitantly, cautiously flirting with each other.

"He won't." Christine replied quietly. "That would be suspicious. He'll drop her off and then scarper," she twirled away and went back towards her room, "eagerly awaiting for me to ring."

"If you say so." He was highly doubtful, especially if Burton got a gander at her from the back.

James went to make some more tea and he dialed 'Annoying' the car bug while he was waiting for the water to boil. He wanted a firm heads up when they headed over. He got it a few minutes later.

"Christine!" She popped around the corner, "He's in the car on the way over here." James waved her into the kitchen. For some reason most of their plotting took place around the bar. He set his phone down and put it on speaker. For a minute all they could hear was engine noise and his horrible classic rock music. Just because something was recorded in 1970 did not mean that it was a classic or that it was worth listening to now.

Then the rock music was abruptly shut off, mid screech. What followed was positively Burton's voice and he positively wasn't speaking English.

"That's Chinese!" James gasped. He really was a Chinese spy!

Christine clarified, "It's Japanese."

"How do you know that?" James demanded, not even realizing how close he was leaning into her to hear the phone. His shoulder was brushing her side.

"Shut up, his accent is atrocious." She leaned in closer to the phone in a attempt to hear better past the engine noise. "He's telling her that she'd better keep you out at least three hours."

James tried not to sound as surprised as he felt, "You speak Japanese?"

"Hush," Christine laughed suddenly, "He told her that if she seduces you then he doesn't want any part of sloppy seconds and he's not paying her any extra for it."

He gasped at her. "Seduces me?"

"She says that if you're not tall and- oh _that_ was crude!" Christine eyed him, "Suffice to say, I don't think she's going to seduce you."

Annoyed, he demanded, "Why not?"

"I'm not translating that, I said it was crude." He was about to insist that she did when she started talking again, translating Burton this time.

"He says to stay off family talk, and text him when they leave."

"So she's a spy too then?"

"I would hope. Or he has an incestuous family business." Ick. Ick. Ick.

Now he started to feel slightly queasy. He had never been up against a real spy before. James got a grip on himself. Of course he had! Even if Christine hadn't been a field agent, she was most definitely a natural at the spying business. He had beaten her several times. If he could defeat her then Burton didn't stand a chance against the both them.

She was ignoring his jitters and sipping on the tea he had made for her when he poured his own cup. The pair in the car didn't speak again and twenty minutes later the engine cut off.

"They're here." James said nervously, "I'd better get my coat."

Christine stopped him with a hand on his arm. "No. Don't, they're early. Act surprised to see them here this early and when I come out act really surprised to see me wearing this."

"Why?"

She rolled her eyes. "Wearing a sexy dress around you really doesn't fit the image we've tried so hard to build up now does it? Just go bug eyed for a moment. Don't forget to text me when you've got an hour left." Christine slid off the bar stool and went back to her room to get ready for her grand entrance. "But why?" He just couldn't understand the point of it.

"Because if I'm obviously not wearing this for you then I have to be wearing it to catch _his_ eye!" She couldn't believe he didn't understand. "Honestly, even a ten year old girl knows how this works!"

A ten year old girl might, but James didn't. He never had been good with the female of the species. A knocking at the door jolted him out of his attempt to figure out her elaborate manipulation scheme.

It went like clockwork. James answered his door with an expression of perfect surprise on his face. He invited them in, and shook hands with his date, a slightly taller woman with a warm, open face and dark brown hair. She didn't look much like Burton, but a lot of siblings didn't look much alike. His own sisters didn't look much like him. He always though that was to their benefit. She smiled and said her name was Emma. She seemed about as dangerous as a Sunday school teacher.

Burton was making his excuses about needing to run along to a dinner meeting when apparently drawn by the voices Christine emerged. She'd done something to her eyes to make them look bigger, and sexier. Her hair floated around her head and just begged to be touched. Burton most definitely caught the slight catch in James's breath when he saw her, and the complete puzzlement in his voice as he introduced her to Burton's 'sister.'

"OH!" Emma said to her 'brother' when Christine walked out, "I thought you said he was single?"

Christine looked shocked for a moment, "Oh no! I'm just staying here for a few days, my place is getting fumigated." She lied on the fly, "Trust me, we're just friends. Christine Johnson." She offered her hand and Emma shook it on reflex. "I work for your brother. Would you like something to drink?"

"Uh...no thank you. We really must get going. The parking is just terrible around the theater, or so I've heard."

"Right then." James opened the door, "Philip?"

Burton lingered for a moment, trying to subtly check her out again. He wasn't as subtle as he thought. He became aware of James asking if he was leaving. "Yes. See you at work Mrs. Johnson." It had worked. He was intrigued with the dress, or the perfect cleavage that the dress showed off.

The three of them made their way into the parking garage. "You two kids have fun!" Burton called out to them as he slid into his car. James rolled his eyes and unlocked his own car.

Emma was a perfect lady. She didn't talk about her family at all but he did learn that she was claiming to be a dental hygienist, currently lived in York and owned three cats. If he was unaware of her secret identity as a corporate spy it would have been a lovely date. As it was he found himself drawn into her open, trusting manner and was tempted to talk entirely too much. He kept his gabbing to unimportant subjects and she didn't press him on work details but she did ask a few leading questions about Christine. Just the sort of probing questions a recently divorced woman would ask to be certain a colleagues wasn't more than that.

She was good. She was really good.

Thankfully the play started before he had to start either revealing too many details about himself or start making things up.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Christine waited until James texted her that they were going to get something to eat before heading back. She did some quick mental math. Twenty minutes to the restaurant he named, an hour to eat and another fifteen minutes to Burton's house. She waited forty minutes before putting her plan into action because she didn't want Burton to have a chance to get frisky with her. Getting thoroughly groped was not in her plans tonight.

She called Burton from the street with her stack of papers tucked into her bag. He answered on the first ring. "I hit a gold mine! He's dirty, I've got bank records for offshore accounts, how big a bonus were you going to give me for getting him disgraced again?" The enthusiasm in her voice would've brought a tear to the eye of her old drama coach.

He fell for it and nearly jumped for joy. "Wonderful! Can you make copies?"

"Hell yes." She sounded triumphant, "I've called a cab, I'll bring it to you now."

Burton tried to veto that idea. "What if James catches you here?"

"So? I'm a grown woman. We'll tell him your meeting ended early and you offered me dinner. Who the hell cares what he thinks? This is going to sink him! Oh, my cab's here. What's your address?" She relayed it to the driver and hung up her phone as they pulled away from the sidewalk.

Well aware that the clock was ticking she walked slowly up the stairs to his flat, trying to time it perfectly. Burton must have been waiting on the other side of the door. "Come in, come in, what have you got?"

She put a little extra sway in her hips as she walked. She wanted him a little distracted and this was the easiest way. He was falling right into her trap. Men were so predictable.

"Tada!" She whipped out the files she had manufactured or copied. Burton took them eagerly and started to read through them. "Oh, make yourself at home." He told her distractedly and he headed to the couch. "Where the hell is all this money coming from?"

"I don't know. He only had partials in the safe. I assume he keeps the rest of it in his safety deposit box. He's got two separate sets of books. This one," she picked out the copies of his checking account, "he pays bills out of, his paycheck is deposited into and these," now she made a second pile of papers, "are for something else."

Burton got more and more worried as he read the account details that Christine had made up. All this extra money he had couldn't be from embezzling. It just couldn't. His employers had competitors. What if Lester worked for them? He needed more information. He was so busy worrying about the possibilities he didn't notice that Christine set her bag down completely on the telly remote.

"Which way is your loo?" She asked suddenly. "Oh, down the hall on the right." He didn't even look up as she took up her bag and headed the way he waved.

She locked the door behind her in the loo and slid the back off the remote. It took standard batteries. She slid in a fresh set and under them was one of her little listening devices. A bug in the remote was almost better than one in his phone, it was always within arm's reach but no one ever thought to check the remote for a bug.

One down, two to go. Maybe.

She walked back into the living room. Burton was still pouring over the documents. She set her bag down in the same place and slid the remote out of the side pocket that was on the side he couldn't see with a quick, easy movement of her hand. He never noticed.

"What do you think?" She asked him.

"I don't know. I had hoped you'd find something personally embarrassing I could blackmail him in leaving with but this is so much more. This could send him to prison for years but where's the money coming from?" He flipped through the papers again as if that would make the answers appear. "This is millions of dollars! He's in the pay of someone very highly placed for this to go on this long." He was certainly speaking from experience, "Who the hell could it be?"

Christine shrugged, then got up and walked into the kitchen. A quick rummage got her a soda from the fridge. She leaned on the island that separated the kitchen from the living room and spotted a few possibilities for bugs. There was a handy socket right in front of her.

Instead of being flat like the bar at James's house this island had a ledge along the side closest to the living room to provide a barrier and it couldn't have been more perfect. Burton was bouncing ideas off of her, and revealing tons of information about his own bosses by the nature of his questions while she was casually unscrewing the cover and planting another bug.

She had one last bug and she dearly would have loved to get it into his phone or briefcase. Failing that, his home office would have to do. "Why don't you make some copies of those papers?" She suggested brightly, "I'm sure you have people you can pass them on to for further research."

His phone chirped, interrupting his answer. He glanced at it. "They're on their way back. Do you want to call a cab?"

"No. James can give me a lift." She was dismissive. "I don't give a damn what he thinks about me being over here." Christine nodded towards the damning documents, "After finding that I don't have to worry about him for much longer." It was a pity her attempt to get into his home office failed.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

James didn't say much on the way home, he merely commented on his surprise to find her over there. She gave him some noncommittal excuse about old anomalies and some new project. She tried to pump James for more information about Connor's project since Philip still wasn't telling her about it.

Since she had already asked him about it before when they weren't under surveillance he knew that question was a ruse. He went along and heckled her for not knowing, not being cleared to know and in general being out of the loop. The words low level flunky were banded about. He didn't know what exactly Connor was working on either, but as far as Burton knew, she didn't know that. He just sounded like he was withholding the information from her and being a complete jackass about it.

On his phone Philip and the woman who just for the evening went by Emma listened to the conversation and laughed about how well their plan was working.

They didn't know that Christine had dialed James's phone to the bug in the remote and he was listening to them from his earbud. Her own earpiece was tuned to the one in the kitchen and she couldn't really make out the words but by the gleam in his eye, he was getting an earful.

She couldn't wait to get home and they could exchange stories! Then she realized that she thought of his house as home and shivered. What the hell was getting into her?

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

James watched her amused as her giddiness had her almost skipping in the door. "What did you hear?" She demanded as soon as he had returned from depositing his phone out of earshot. Christine couldn't contain herself. She was wishing she had reversed who got to listen to which bug and she blurted out the only bit of information she had. "He called her Sakura! If that's her real name then she's Japanese. Sakura is as common as Mary is in English."

He arched an eyebrow and debated with himself over demanding to know how she knew so much Japanese before telling her the rousing confession Burton had made. He couldn't hold it in.

"He said that Connor's device was nearly complete and ready for field testing, and that when that happened then Mishi was going to go into an entirely new business. He made a little tasteless joke about Godzilla. Emma, or Sakura is his handler, and lover." He had hung up when that little revelation became apparent.

Christine stopped in her routine action of putting the kettle on. "Mishi? Seriously?"

"That's what he said, several times."

"We're so fucked."

The uncharacteristic profanity momentarily shocked him, "Pardon?"

"Mishi is one of the biggest technology companies in Japan."

James thought for a second and drew a blank. "If they're that big then why have I never heard of them?"

She smiled in a not pleasant way. "They don't make things that sell to the general public."

Based on her hobbies, he guessed, "Spy gadgets?"

"Oh yes. Spy gadgets. They sell to everyone, every nation, every dictator, every weapons dealer. Weapons and spy gadgets and software. They've been accused of hacking government computers and selling the information." Christine thought of some other rumors she had heard about Mishi, "They've been accused of being tied to the Yakuza but they have an arrangement with the Japanese government and any official investigation is dismissed for 'lack of evidence.'" She paused, "Or investigators. They tend to go missing."

"Wonderful." For him, sarcasm was never out of place, "I can't believe I've never heard of them."

"You never ran in the right circles James...remember that virus that screwed up Iran's nuclear program?"

"Yes."

"I wouldn't be surprised at all if Mishi engineers wrote it and then sold it to whatever country deployed it. I read about it and that situation had a little too much flair for a typical intel operation." A virus that hid and spread and spread and spread and just messed up things just a tiny little bit...that wasn't a product of any government drone in a cubical.

"So what do we do?"

She sounded so tired when she answered him. "I don't know. I don't know. Keep on I suppose. If they gain the power of the anomalies then the whole world is screwed."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The next morning they got up and headed to the country for a little rest before resuming their private, silent battle against Burton and his legion of nasty semi-legal criminal types. It was mid-morning when they arrived. James made a kettle of tea and retired to the library to retreat into scifi. Christine thought about taking a walk or cruising the internet to gather more intel before going to lunch but after a minute she just followed him into the library. She had to get away from it all for a while.

He glanced at her from his usual spot taking up the whole couch while she browsed around, picked a book out and curled up in the larger chair. They spend a few hours in peaceful silence, interrupted only by the swish of turning pages as they both unwound, relaxed from the week and tried to take a few hours away from it all.

Christine kept running over it in her mind. Burton worked for Mishi. Mishi knew about the anomalies. Mishi may have already sold the information to other countries. They couldn't go to internal affairs because the reason Mishi survived and thrived was because they made sure that could contain any leaks. Permanently. MI-6 suspected that Mishi, along with every other intel organization in the world had agents inside the Home Office. For a while her job was to flush them out. Unwinding Burton's organization would be tricky...she dragged her mind away from it and made herself focus on her book and let it go, just for a few hours.

She couldn't. "He said something to me, while he was asking me about you. He was asking if you knew a bunch of different people in the Home Office."

James barely looked up from his novel. "When was this?"

"When I was in his house. I think maybe one of them might be one of his contacts. I'll offer to pilfer your address book on Monday."

"That's so generous of you." Only the slight quark of his lips betrayed his humor. "Why would I keep a secret contact in my address book?"

She countered. "Why would you keep such important records in a safe I cracked in two hours? James, you don't want him to think you're really good at this."

Now his manliness was insulted. "If I was doing this for real I'd be very good at it. If I did bother to own a safe it would take a crack team of experts years to break into it."

Christine rolled her eyes at his tone. "That's right, let him think you're a genius. That's just the way to get him to make mistakes."

"All right then, so I act like a buffoon?"

"No." She couldn't believe this, she was soothing his ego. Damn fragile male egos. "Act like you always do. As far as Burton knows, no one has ever even suspected you before. If it makes you feel better then I'll tell him that the phone numbers don't match the names." She tossed that tiny bit of tradecraft his direction as a peace offering.

He was slightly mollified. "I suppose. It certainly won't be recorded under 'S' for Secret Contact or 'F' for Fellow Traitor or 'M' for Mishi-" Christine started laughing at him and begged him to stop, "I get the point! I get the point! I'll make you sound clever!"

"All right then. I'd better sound _very_ clever." He looked at her giggling out of the corner of his eye for a moment before turning back to his book.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

That afternoon found them in the pub ordering two 'usuals' and being the subject of intense speculation. The theory that Christine was fleeing from an abusive man was gaining traction, especially after James insisted that they were just colleagues but this was the second weekend she had accompanied him to the countryside. It was really only the second weekend. How time flies during international conspiracies.

He didn't catch Ashley making a quick call to her pathetic younger cousin to confirm that James and Christine were still claiming not to to be an item.

David West a.k.a. pathetic younger cousin, just happened to run into them outside the pub after lunch. "James! How are you doing?" The exuberant young man offered his hand. James knew he was up to something but he shook it anyway. "I'm fine, how are you?"

"Wonderful, wonderful, I was just coming by to ask your adorable coworker something." James caught the look of surprise that crossed Christine's face at being referred to as adorable. David grinned at her, "Would you be interested in having dinner with me tonight?"

She was surprised, but she covered it well. "I- how old are you?"

"Darling," David actually took her hand and kissed the back of it like he was a champion romantic, "Age is just a number."

"Yes it is, it's also experience." Christine checked him out slowly from head to toe like she was a cat examining a tasty morsel. "I don't really think you're old enough to handle me just yet." She patted his cheek in a friendly fashion and let her fingers linger just a moment too long before walking to the car. David watched her hips sway as she walked away from him.

James clapped him on the shoulder. "I told you she'd eat you alive."

"Oh but what a way to go. I can't believe you're not tapping that."

"David! I'm appalled. I've known the woman for years and I don't want any part of...that. I might not survive." That was true...wasn't it? The image of her in that low cut red dress from the night before floated up in his mind before his attention was drawn back to David.

The rejected suitor placed his hand on his heart like it was broken, "Like I said, what a way to go."

"You're embarrassing."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

In the car on the way back he glanced over at Christine, who was studiously ignoring him by intently watching out the open window. "Why didn't you take him up on his offer?"

He watched her brush her hair back before answering him, "You were there. He's much too young for me. Too much like being followed around by a horny, desperate puppy."

She was embarrassed! He pressed the point to see if he could actually get her to blush. "Some woman would like a younger man, vigor of youth and all that." His voice trailed off as he watched her out of the corner of his eye.

No blush. "They also wear out faster, then spend the rest of the night snoring away." She objected. "It's such a disappointment."

"So you'd wear him out then? That's confident of you." Still no blush.

She waved his objections off, "He couldn't last long enough for me. Young men find...noises...nearly as erotic as the actual fun. It tends to cut the main event short."

James was confused as he pulled up the driveway. "Noises?"

She got out to open the gate and leaned back in the open window, giving him an unintentional view down her shirt. His attention was drawn away from the light dusting of freckles and slightest hint of red lace with her next words.

"I'm _quite_ the screamer." Christine smirked at him as the blush raced up his cheeks, turning even the tips of his ears red. He didn't know how to respond to that.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At the house she roamed off to do her own thing and he gratefully fled to his library, retreating into the world of science fiction. It was true, the truth really was stranger than fiction. They used to be mortal enemies and now he was flirting with her. Was she flirting back? What had that red dress really been all about? He couldn't focus on his book. She _ironed_ his bloody shirt! That had to mean something, didn't it? He thought he had outgrown this sort of confusion about woman decades ago.

But then again he hadn't had a date in five years so maybe not.

He fretted about it all afternoon and then tried to be super casual towards her during dinner. They were back at the pub...easily sliding into the local routine. The cook working that evening did a mean shepards pie. Ashley flitted by their table, dropped off their food and then spun off to deal with a large family and their kids that were currently flinging silverware about.

He caught Christine watching the baby in the high chair out of the corner of her eye and thought back to the argument they had for Burton's benefit about her potential as a surrogate mother. She hadn't brought up any of that fight since then so he assumed she hadn't really cared – knowing it was completely staged. She had expressed pity for anyone woman that bought his 'donations' obviously, that was his only way of paying for university. She said he couldn't possibly be smart enough to get a scholarship. It got quite crude there at the end.

He shook his attention back to the here and now and now realized that she had asked him a question. "Beg pardon?"

She smiled, "I asked if you would show me around the place tomorrow, how far the property goes."

"Oh. Yes. If you like. After church we could go for a walk." James answered absently. "Why are you still watching that baby?" She flushed at being caught and her lips quirked up. Teasing about sex didn't make her bat an eye but being caught watching a baby made her cheeks get just a little darker.

Christine tried to brush it off. "She's cute."

Right now the baby was chewing on someone's sunglasses and hanging almost sideways out of the chair, held down only by the lap belt. There was a serious amount of mashed up food smeared around her face and body. "Cute?" He was skeptical. "I never pegged you for the type to like babies."

"I like baby cats and baby dogs too. Baby turtles even." She defended herself. He arched an eyebrow and let her know that he totally wasn't buying that. She was forced to play the girl card. "Keep talking mister, I'll go ask if I can hold her and bring her over here."

"Do it then. I dare you." The words were out of his mouth before he could bite them back. Her eyes flashed at the challenge and she started to stand up, "No wait, I withdraw the dare. I know you'll do it." Christine giggled at him and sat back down. "I wouldn't think you'd be scared of a little baby. How many nieces and nephews do you have again?"

"Scads. Dozens. I've held many babies and they're all alike. Sticky, sometimes smelly, noisy..." He picked at the remains of his dinner and the conversation wandered away from babies to other things. They talked about their different upbringings.

They couldn't have had more opposite childhoods. She was an only child, and had both her parents devoted to her. He was nearly tail end Charley and grew up in a house full of noise and chaos. That was probably why he preferred peace and quiet now.

"I remember when I was little I wanted a sister so badly." She said wistfully, still with one eye on the baby.

He snorted. "Sisters aren't all they're cracked up to be. Especially if nearly all of them are older. My sisters treated me like their baby doll until I was big enough to fight them off." He shuddered, remembering the horror of them painting his nails and practicing their make-up applying skills. He was only three! He didn't know any better!

She was unsympathetic. "Still. I never had one."

"The grass is always green on the other side of the fence I suppose. Are you ready?"

"Yeah." James got up to pay the check and pretended not to watch her go over and tickle the baby for a minute before they left.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

As they were walking into the house he had a thought. "Are you still on medication?"

"No. I finished it all Thursday. I mean, not if Burton asks obviously but yeah. I'm done with it."

"Want a nightcap?"

She leaned back and surprised him by agreeing.

That was how they ended up on the back patio, laying on the reclining outdoor chairs with a bottle of port between them staring at the stars.

It was a perfectly clear night with a nearly full moon. The stars glittered and shimmered at them far above. A gentle breeze was blowing, ruffling Christine's hair. She sipped her wine and admired the view. She was deeply envious of James's 'little place in the country' as he called it. The crickets, or possibly it was frogs added a little natural soundtrack to the evening.

"It's so beautiful out here." She took in the clear starry night and sighed happily. "I always forget how big the sky looks out in the country."

James surprised himself by answering her, "That's part of the reason I wanted a place in the country. I love the night sky. When I was a boy I would run around pretending that I was an astronaut, just waiting on my ship to return." He blushed in the dark at saying something so stupid.

She didn't pick on him for it. "I don't blame you. It seems as if they're almost close enough to touch."

"Why are you being so nice?" James couldn't help himself. "I mean, it's like the woman I knew before you vanished was someone else, with the same name. I never imagined that you could be good company." He had a brief flash back to when Nick Cutter kept insisting that Jenny was really Claudia, but Christine started talking and distracted him from that theory.

"You never had a reason. I never let you have a reason. Believe me, I didn't like you any more than you liked me back then. You were always mucking up my grand plans."

"Hard to believe that so much can change in a few weeks." He commented.

She laughed at it had a bit of a nervous tinge to it. "James, I've never had anyone look after me, or my business. You took my cat to the vet. I called his office and they remember you coming in with my mum." Her ever suspicious mind insisted that she do that to check out his story. The receptionist had gone on and on about how sweet Mr. Lester was to drive Mrs. Johnson in over and over with the old boy. Christine shook the memory off and sipped her drink, "You took care of my mum. It seemed the height of...I don't know...ungratefulness to keep treating you like dirt."

Their wasn't any way he could respond to that easily. Don't worry about it? You'd do the same for me? She was grateful to him. What a totally odd sensation. It wasn't flirting at all then, she was just grateful. Good thing he didn't get more overt with his attentions. The slightest movement of him shifting around on the chair drew her attention to his nearly empty glass.

She topped up his glass and asked him a question that had been bothering her for two weeks now. "Why did you keep my mother's rings?"

He sipped his drink and she could see he was debating with himself whether or not to answer her. "Come on, I won't make fun of you." She tried to cajole him along.

James sighed loudly, "Your mum loved your dad very much. She talked about him all the time. I suppose I thought that if I ever found some woman daft enough to marry me I could give her those rings."

"James, that's almost romantic."

He sipped his drink again. It made talking with her easier, "Yes, well, I don't think I'll ever get married so it's not like I'll miss them."

"Do you want to be married?" Her tone was curious, and not mocking so he answered her honestly, allowing the strong wine to loosen his tongue.

"To the right woman. I do get lonely every now and again. It would be nice to have a wife, a partner." He was well aware of how pathetic he sounded so he turned it around on her. "What about you? I don't see any rings on your finger."

Taken aback, she took a drink just to settle her mind. "I'm not the marrying type."

"Why not?"

He had been honest with her, she felt obligated to answer. "My father was very strict, he didn't allow me to date in school. He felt it would take away from my academics."

"So? You haven't been in school for decades. Surely you dated in university?"

"Well yes, I did, but the men were either only going out with me so I'd write their papers for them or they were searching for a trophy wife. It's like I missed that stage where normal girls learn how to fall in love."

James looked at her in surprise, "Have you never had a really serious boyfriend? Someone you were in love with and wanted to be with forever?"

She shrugged, "Nope. I just don't think I'm wired to be domestic. Having someone around all the time, expected to cook and clean up after them, it would get too annoying."

James laughed at that statement as he thought about how she had made herself at home at his house. They were even taking turns cooking dinner. "Christine, you have the potential to be very domestic."

She tossed small pillow off the chair at him. "Shut up!" The brunette laughed at them both. "I think I've had too much to drink. I'm going to bed."

"Seriously, have you never even lived with a boyfriend?"

She shook her head and tried to stand up. "Nope. Living with you is the closest I've come. I didn't live with a flatmate even when I was in school."

That was interesting. "How are you liking it so far?" At her suspicious look he clarified, "having someone else in the house?"

She took two very deliberate steps towards the house. "It's not so bad. I like having someone else cook sometimes!"

"So do I!" He called after her as she went in. "Good night Christy."

"Good night James." Christine replied just before pulling the door shut behind her.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Please review! Dastardly Mishi Corp...they're about to make Burton prove his spy is really his.


	8. Chapter 8

Thank you so much to everyone that's reading and reviewing this story. Also I'd like to thank all the shy people that have favorited! It really makes my day when someone lets me know that they like it! Thanks!

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Chapter 8

The next morning when he drifted downstairs she wasn't anywhere to be found, but there was evidence in the form of a half full coffee pot that she was awake. James poured himself his little morning pick me up and sat at the table for a minute before he started to wonder where she was. He leaned back and looked into the living room. The telly was off and the room was empty. Where was she?

James picked up his coffee and went out the kitchen door to see if she was on the back porch. She was, sort of. She was laying in a hammock he didn't know he had, that most certainly hadn't been strung up between those two trees last night. "Where did that come from?" He asked curiously as he walked over to her.

She looked completely comfortable gently swaying in the morning breeze in her blue silk pajamas with a coffee cup in her hand hanging off the edge. The mental picture of a cat piled up on a sunny windowsill came to mind, for some reason. "I found it, in the hall closet last week when I was poking around. I'm surprised you haven't hung it up yet. The Christmas card from your sister was still stuck on the box." Christine moved her head to look at him, "You really should send her a thank you note for it."

That sounded vaguely familiar. Was it two years ago or three that Naomi had given him that hammock? "Of course." James reached out and pushed it gently. She sighed happily. "I could really get used to this place."

"It's not a resort you know." James replied with an eyebrow arched at her. "We've got serious work to do this week. Our time is nearly up."

She waved his concerns away. "I'm working an angle." Burton's face when he saw her in that dress floated to the forefront of her mind. It was the easiest angle of all. "Don't worry."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Monday morning she found a time to work her chosen angle. A little extra swish in the step, a distracted bend to pick up a pen and he was reeled in, hook line and sinker. So she thought. He had some orders that he had to follow and his plans fell right in line with hers.

"So Christine..." Burton started off once his secretary left them alone. "I was thinking, you must need to get away from James once in awhile and have a good time."

She tossed him a suspicious look that had a little curiosity leaking around the edges. He waited while the curiosity took over and she leaned in just a hint.

"What do you have in mind?"

Burton struck what he probably thought was a flirty look. In reality it just made him look as if he'd briefly forgotten what he was going to say. "We could get a drink, there's a new place in town I've been meaning to check out. We could go there tonight."

Christine was skeptical. "Go out on a Monday night?"

"It will be fun!" He tried to cajole her along. There were many things he wanted her alone for. His bosses didn't trust her nearly as much as he did. He had been ordered to find out if she was trying to play him. Her past with MI-6 was making them very nervous. The Mishi organization did not handle nervous very well. Nervous was resolved into either 'not a problem' or 'not a living problem'.

She thought about his offer for a few seconds. "Fine. Okay. I'll meet you there."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

That was how James Lester found himself sitting alone in the corner in a place he wouldn't've set foot in when he was still a gawky student. James looked across the smokey club at the bar. It was lit up with blue neon lights, giving the effect that everyone was underwater. Christine was leaning in much too close to Burton, laughing at something witty he had said with one hand resting on his shoulder.

James sipped his martini and kept his eyes on them. She didn't look as if she need backup. More like she wanted a witness to her blatant flirting. This was such a waste of an evening to sit here and watch her drape herself all over that arrogant creep.

With one last comment, she slid off the bar stool and headed away in the general direction of the ladies room. Burton glanced about and then dipped one hand into his pocket. James could see he had something hidden in his hand that he fiddled with briefly. He glanced about again then moved Christine's drink slightly towards him with his hand on the rim, not the stem.

Still trying to figure out what Burton was playing at, James didn't realize until he saw him drop whatever it was into his pocket again, then give Christine's drink a quick stir. Oh bugger.

James got his phone out and texted her. 'Stay in loo. J' He send while he composed the longer message. 'He put something in your drink. What do we do?'

Anxious seconds passed before she responded. 'I can't spill it. He'll know something's up. I'll drink it, you find a way to get me out of here. It's probably an interrogation drug. I've eaten, it'll take twenty to thirty minutes before it takes effect.'

'How?'

'You're clever. Think of something. I'll stall a bit before I finish it. I'm coming out now. Delete these messages.'

As if she still had to tell him that. It only took a minute of fiddling before he deleted the really odd texts off the phone. He looked up and Christine was back on her bar stool sipping on the doctored drink. She only took a sip and then set it down again, seemingly engaged in some interesting conversation.

What to do, what to do? He cast him mind about for any reason he could call her and demand she come back to the house right now. Nothing remotely plausible came to mind. Nothing that wouldn't make Burton just as suspicious as spilling the doctored drink. What to do?

Suddenly, an idea occurred to him but it wasn't ideal. He didn't have a choice. He took the back off his phone and carefully pulled the little listening device out. He hoped it wouldn't alert anyone when he disconnected it from the battery but he needed to talk for this. He rolled it up in a napkin and crushed it under his foot.

Abby answered on the third ring. "'lo?"

"Abby, is Connor in the room?"

"Yeah."

"Walk out of the room, don't let him know you're talking to me."

"What?" Confused, she did as he asked. "What's going on?"

"Lots of things. I need you to trust me. Can you do that?"

"Sure. Why? Connor's playing World of Warcraft. They're attacking the something called 'Violet Hold'. An anomaly could open right in front of him and he wouldn't notice. I'm in the kitchen now."

"Don't let him realize you're talking to me. It's complicated, I'll explain later but Christine's in trouble-"

"What?"

"Shhhh, Do you know where the Typhoon club is?

"Yeah," He could hear the utter bewilderment in her voice, "Why?"

"I need you to come here right now and look as if you just happened to pop in. Christine's at the bar with Burton-"

"What!" Abby managed to hiss her outrage instead of shout. "Why's she in a bar with that leach?"

"Stop asking questions and listen, come in and look as if you just spotted her. Find a reason to get her away from him and out of here."

"Why can't you do it? I can hear the club music in the background."

"He can't know I'm here, Abby trust me please,"

"All right, all right." She grumbled as she grabbed her coat.

Gratefully James said, "Please, come as soon as you can. Don't let on that I called you and don't let Connor find out!"

Still confused, but willing to trust Lester Abby walked back into the living room. "That was one of my old mates from the zoo. She's trashed in a bar and needs a lift. Her lowlife boyfriend took off without her after they had a spat."

Connor giggled, "That's not a good life choice. What bar? I'll come with you. We haven't been out in a long time."

She demure, "That's not necessary, she's going to want to vent about men. You might get vented on. It's safer for you here." Abby leaned down and kissed his cheek. "I'll be back in a bit."

James was on pins and needles waiting the eternal amount of time it took Abby to show up. Finally he saw her briefly silhouetted against the entrance. She looked around but the place wasn't lit well enough for her to see him back in his dark corner. Abby snagged a tube of green liquor from a passing waitress and ambled over to the bar.

"Christine!" She squealed and jumped between Christine and Burton. "Fancy meeting you here!" Abby pretended to notice Burton for the first time, "Oh, hello, didn't notice you there."

He smiled his most patronizing smile. "Good evening, Mrs. Maitland. Is Mr. Temple here also?"

"No, he's back at the flat. I'm meeting some girlfriends for a night out." Abby lied glibly, then looked back at Christine. She was swaying slightly on her bar stool. "Christine, are you all right?" Abby leaned in close to examine her. Her pupils were dilated, and she looked a little pale. "How much have you had?"

"Two or three." Burton answered for her. "I can still talk for myself," Christine said, highly annoyed. "Two or three, I think."

"You think? You don't look so good."

Christine pursed her lips and shook her head, "I don't feel so good. I think I ought to go." With the care only the truly drunk managed, she slipped of the bar stool. "Philip, it's been a lovely evening, we'll have to do this again sometime." She moved to walk away from the bar and sagged. Abby grabbed her and had a sudden flashback to when they had been in this exact position in the hospital.

"I'll drive you home." Abby offered before Burton could, "My friends can do without me for a bit. Unless you came together?"

Burton denied it. "No. Abby, please don't mention this around work. It could be very embarrassing for Christine."

"Don't worry, I won't say a word." Abby promised him while she helped Christine walk to the parking lot. As soon as they were surrounded by the cool night air Christine spoke, a lot less slurred than she had been inside, "Thank you, that was getting bad." She could feel her inhibitions slipping away.

"What's going on?" Abby deposited her friend carefully in the passenger side of her little car. "Lester called me in a panic and I find you cozying up to Burton in a crappy club."

"It's all part of the plan!" The older woman replied cheerfully as the last bit of reserve and secrecy she was capable of drifted off into the drug induced ether, "We're going to destroy him, but he put something in my drink."

"What!"

"Oh don't be a wet blanket, you saved me." Christine's voice took on the tone of someone who would say anything and not care in the least. "I suppose James helped. He did it while I was in the loo. Philip, not James. Such a bastard." The drunk woman leaned over and patted Abby on the arm.

"You're a good friend Abby, I've never really had a good friend before."

Oh no, she was a weepy drunk. "Don't worry about it. So what's going on?"

"I told you, we're going to destroy him." She sounded highly chuffed with herself.

"Who?"

"Philip!"

"Who's we?"

"James and me. I mean I. James and I."

Abby nearly missed her turn she was so surprised. "But you had a flaming row right in the middle of the office this afternoon! You shout at each other all the time!"

"I know!" Christine laughed, "It's the perfect cover! Nobody suspects a thing!"

Abby flipped her phone out, "I'm getting some answers." She started to ring Lester back but Christine hastily stopped her and in the process nearly made her drive off the road, "Don't call him, I bugged his phone."

"You what!"

"I bugged his phone. It's all right, he saw me do it."

Abby was incredulous. "What's the point then?"

"So Philip would trust me! Duh."

"So Philip would trust you? Lester is explaining a lot when we get back to his flat."

"It's such a nice flat. I love the view. And don't be mean to him, he's sweet."

"What?"

"He kept my horse after I died. Well, I didn't die." She patted Abby's arm again, "You know what I mean. We have to come up with a tense for that. He pretends to be grumpy all the time but he's not."

"You're drunk and rambling."

"No, I'm drugged." Christine corrected her, "I've only had two drinks and two drinks hasn't made me chatty since I was twelve."

"We should call the police."

Christine started wailing, "No! That's no fun! That would ruin everything!"

"Fine, I won't but one of you better start making some sense."

"We make perfect sense! Just don't say anything around the briefcase."

"What?"

"I bugged that too. And his office."

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Who cares about that? Wanna listen to Philips car?" Before Abby could try to make sense of that bit of nonsense Christine had her phone out and dialed the bug in his car. She put it on speaker phone so Abby could listen to the pissed off man rant.

"-I don't know! Another woman from work showed up and saw she wasn't right. She thinks she was drunk."

Pause.

"No, she won't remember a thing. Don't you think I thought of that?"

Pause.

"Tomorrow night? Okay. If she doesn't come through with some solid information by the end of the week I'll just call Hector."

Pause.

"I was thinking more hunting accident. He goes out to the country every weekend. It would be simple. Hector is good at simple."

Pause.

"The police won't look past the obvious. Look, you'll have your anomaly and I'll have my money. Have I ever let you down?"

Pause

"Tomorrow then." Burton evidently hung up and cranked up more of his classic rock and roll.

"Holy Fuck." Abby swore. "What the fuck is going on?"

"It's really very simple. Philip is a spy and we're going to annihilate him!" Christine crowed, then frowned and grabbed her stomach, "Oh, I don't feel good."

"Are you going to be sick?" Abby demanded. She hadn't had to clean sick up out of her car since high school.

The other woman denied it with the impeccable logic of the impaired. "No, I just feel sick."

Abby rolled her eyes and pulled into the garage next to Lester's building. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah. No. Yeah."

"Lean on me then." Abby parked and helped Christine out. The brunette was noticeably heavier and more unsteady on her feet just in the short time since leaving the club. "Tell me if you're going to be sick."

"Okay." Christine clutched her tightly as they made they way over to the elevator. "Where's James?"

"I don't know."

"I don't have a key."

The lack of a key issue didn't come up. Lester came through the parking garage door ten steps behind them. "Are you all right? Does he suspect anything?" He started firing off questions as soon as he saw them waiting on the elevator. Thankfully it was empty as they all piled in.

"I'm wonderful!" Christine nearly shouted happily, "He thinks I'm a a a moron and Abby's nosy but he doesn't think anything...tell him what we heard!" Before Abby could say anything Christine plowed on, "He's hired someone to kill you!"

The elevator stopping on his floor kept him from talking. "Don't say anything until I move the briefcase." Lester said, then realized how nutters he sounded. Abby only rolled her eyes.

"She explained about that. I want some answers."

"Don't we all?" Lester muttered as he let them in. He moved his briefcase from the living room into the office and dropped his phone on top of it out of habit. Abby watched him flick the tv on from the doorway. He came out and shut the door firmly behind him.

"We can talk now."

"Finally!" Christine was draped across the couch with her little dress riding dangerously high on her thigh. "I'll make us some tea." Lester offered, to give Abby a chance deal with her friend.

Abby tugged Christine's dress back down. "Sit up honey," Abby looked into her eyes and snapped her fingers a few times. Christine didn't blink. "Why on earth did you drink it if you knew he drugged it?"

"Cause I didn't know what else to do. You saved me!" Christine hugged her, then flopped back down. "I could have blown the whole op!"

"Yeah, what's going on? Why haven't you called the authorities?"

"We can't." Lester came back into the room. "Philip is slick, we haven't got any proof."

"I heard him! He said he was going to arrange a hunting accident!"

"On the car bug? I didn't think about listening to it."

"Tell me what the hell is going on or I'm calling the police."

"Fine." Lester said tiredly and was promptly interrupted by Christine.

"Philip's a traitor! And an ass! He tried to feel me up! Creep!"

"What do you think he gave you?" Lester asked, "When does it wear off?"

She shrugged, which looked really odd since she was still laying down. "Any interrogation drug. I'm not immune, remember? Plus a roofie so I don't remember. It's what I would do."

"What's a roofie?" Lester was confused. Abby looked murderous. "We're calling the police-"

"No! Don't! We can get him on so much more than that." Christine pleaded with her. "We've got a plan."

Lester repeated himself, "what's a roofie?"

"It's a date rape drug." Christine told him sleepily, "Good thing I took you along for back up! I'm not going to remember any of this tomorrow." She yawned.

He looked down at her, zoning out on the couch. "That's probably for the best."

"I'm sleepy."

"Let's get you to bed." Between them they managed to get Christine upright again. They half carried, half walked her down to her room and set her on the bed. "Can you...deal with her?" Lester asked Abby, looking supremely uncomfortable.

"Yeah. It's not the first time I've put a trashed friend to bed." Abby shut the door behind him and turned to Christine. She was sprawled out on the bed.

"Where's your PJ's?"

Christine waved languorously towards the dresser. Abby sighed and went digging. It didn't take her long to find the blue pajamas. Christine still didn't have very many clothes. By the time Abby got them Christine was nearly asleep, or unconscious.

Like she told Lester, it wasn't the first time she'd put someone to bed that couldn't manage on their own. It was always bit creepy, like dressing a doll. Abby tried to treat Christine's limp body the way she'd want someone to treat her if she was drunk and drugged.

When she emerged Lester was waiting with two mugs of tea.

"I expect you want that explanation now."

"You expect right, and it better be good."

"Let's sit down." Lester had spent the past few minutes trying to decide on exactly what to tell Abby. He launched into the version he had decided on.

"That first day she was out of the hospital I was telling her about the ARC, and what had changed. I mentioned Burton and she went off. She said she had sacked him thirteen years ago."

"What?"

"She sacked him. Suspected him of being a spy. She was horrified he had access to the ARC and anomalies. Something about him has always bothered me, so we made a plan to put our mutual loathing aside to bring him down."

"So all the fighting and feuding? That's just an act?"

"No, not all of it. We've...got a complicated relationship. It's still mostly hate/hate." Was it really or was that just habit talking? He dragged his thoughts away from the brunette and focused on the blonde in front of him, "But we manage to stay focused on Burton most of the time."

"We heard him in his car." Abby relayed the conversation. "She said she put bugs everywhere?"

"Yes. She takes interoffice politics to an entirely new level." He set his mug down. "We've known we only had until the end of the month to figure out entirely what he's up to. It's a matter of national security Abby." He pleaded with her, "The organization he's working for is extensive and incredibly dangerous, we're positive it extends throughout the home office. We have to catch him in something even he can't wiggle out of with the protection he has."

"To think that this morning I was worried if the raptors were getting enough vitamin A." The blonde woman was shocked at what all was going on right in front of her, then something else occurred to her. "She said you had her horse?"

Lester went pale. "What else did she say?"

"Just that you got her horse after she died. If she really hated you why would you get her horse?"

"I didn't get it from her, I got the fat beast from her mother." That didn't make any sense at all to Abby and she told him so. She got to see him momentarily lose his compose enough to hold his head in annoyance. For just a second he didn't look like the perfectly in control man she had known for years. He just looked like a man, that was in over his head and struggling to tread water. It was a bit eye opening to realize he was only human.

"I helped her mum navigate the bureaucratic maze to get all of the death benefits she was due. She thought I was helping her because Christine and I were friends. I never told her differently, it would have upset her." He met Abby's eyes, "She repaid me by leaving me her daughters horse when she passed away. I didn't know what to do with the silly thing so I just ignored him." There was a whole Fedex truck worth of baggage that he left out of that explanation.

As a zookeeper Abby knew that any large animal came with correspondingly large bills. She had been on the receiving end of his lectures on the menagerie budget often enough. She knew how he liked to spend as little as possible. She was highly skeptical of that answer. "You just kept him?" Lester groaned and confessed the semi-truth.

"My nieces and nephews like him. I've become a popular uncle since I have a pony. I kept him around for them."

She melted. "That's sweet of you."

"For heaven's sake don't tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain."

"I won't. I won't say anything to Connor." Something occurred to her, "So when she was babbling at me about how much she hated you and how annoying you were, and I was telling Connor, that was all part of the plan to get Burton?"

"I'm sorry Abby, we used you." He was truly repentant.

To his surprise she smiled, "That's all right, at first, I was only nice to Christine because I wanted her to like us, so she wouldn't try to get us all sacked again. So I guess it's fair. We're past all that now though."

"Yeah, we're way past that. There's bugs all around me, my office, my phone, my briefcase, the car. If you have to talk about something then tell Christine you want to go shopping."

"I'll do that." Abby paused as something occurred to her, "Did you really tell her that she had child-bearing hips?"

"Yes...solely for Burton's benefit." He tried to cover. The last thing he wanted to do was admit he had noticed any sort of feminine shape. Although that wasn't really a compliment. Abby grinned at him. "No wonder she wanted to go shopping so badly with your bank card." She stood up, "Anyway, check on her before you go to sleep and make sure she stays on her side."

"Why?"

"Did you never party at school? If she pukes while she's laying on her back she could choke and die. It's very dangerous."

"I see. That would just ruin our plans." He offered a small smile. "I'll make sure she's alright."

"Goodnight Lester."

"Good night Abby, thank you."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After he locked up after Abby left he went down the hall to Christine's room. Abby had propped her with the pillows but in that short period of time since Abby left she had slumped down and was nearly flat on her back, making a strangled, wheezing sound. He shifted her around so her face wasn't tucked into her shoulder. She started breathing normally, then wiggled around again so she was semi-curled up and wheezing. It was flamingly obvious to him that she wasn't going to stay propped up on her side without drastic measures.

"Oh damn." James realized he was going to have to do something awkward.

He went down to his room and quickly changed into his pajama pants and a

t-shirt. "I can't believe this." He said to her unconscious form. "I want you to know that I'm only doing this because you dying like an aging rock star would entail mountains of paperwork." Right? _Right?_

He flicked the overhead light off and turned the bedside lamp on. "May the good lord have mercy on my soul." She didn't budge at all when he moved the pillows out of his way and gingerly shifted her back onto her side. It had been a while, but he still remembered how to spoon.

James gently slid one arm under her head and tucked the other one over her stomach, carefully in the safe zone. With her head propped up she finally stopped the gasping strangled breathing. This was going to be so awkward in the morning if she woke up first. He reached over and clicked the lamp off. He tried to ignore how nice her hair smelled while he drifted off to sleep.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Fortunately he woke up first. They were still spooning, leaning against each other. The first thing he was aware of was how incredibly comfortable he felt with the beautiful woman curled next to him. The second thing was that he had a bad case of morning wood, poking directly into her ass. Thank heaven he woke up first. James reached behind him and snagged a pillow. He started the process of extracting his arm from under her head and replacing it with the pillow.

It was a delicate operation, but he succeeded. He started to slide backwards out of the bed with the worst happened. Her breathing changed slightly, she was waking up! As soon as he was fully away from her she slipped down onto her back and tossed an arm out that flopped across his chest. She stretched and grabbed his side in her sleep.

Christine made a puzzled sound and blinked her eyes open, looking directly at him. He could tell the exact moment her sleepy brain processed what she saw. She jumped up onto her side, with the arm that had been across his chest pushing her up. "What the hell are you doing here?" She grabbed her forehead, "and why am I hungover? What the hell happened last night?"

"It's a long story." James said desperately as he slid further away from her. "What do you remember?"

"Arg, stop shouting. We didn't, did we?" She did a quick self inventory. She didn't feel as if she'd gotten laid last night. A quick peek under the blankets revealed that she was still wearing her pajamas, and he had a huge bulge in his. She blushed while he tried to get out of there.

"No, it's complicated, I'll make us some coffee and I'll explain everything." Before she could say anything else, he got up and almost ran out of the room. "It better be a good explanation." She grumbled as she made her way to the shower. That was always a good first step for a hangover.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Twenty minutes later she made her way into the kitchen. "About that explanation? What the hell happened? I remember going into that grotty club and then nothing."

"Burton drugged you." James handed her a mug and started to bring her up to date on the events of last night. "Abby's probably going to corner you today and want to know how you are. She was horrified that we weren't going to call the police."

"I'm horrified we aren't going to call the police, but I've got bigger plans for him. I'll get some answers out of him today." He saw the anger in her eyes and was profoundly glad it wasn't targeted at him. Then it was.

"Why the hell were you sleeping in my room?"

"I tried propping you up with some pillows but you kept rolling around. I didn't want you to be the first adult to die of crib death." He mimicked the raspy, wheezing breathing she was doing the night before. "It was just as awkward for me as it was for you." James lied. He had actually slept really well and had been exceedingly comfortable, until she caught him. If only he had made a clean escape!

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

At work they kept their distance, completely ignoring each other going through security. The guard that checked them in could tell she was furious about something, he observed Lester keeping his distance behind her and made a completely inaccurate assumption. His first wife had been the same way sometimes.

As soon as Christine was in the ARC she made a beeline for Burton's office. She blasted past his gatekeeper with a righteous anger, slamming his door open. She didn't even have to pretend her mood.

He looked up from his phone. "I'll call you back." He clicked it shut.

"What the hell did you do last night?" She slammed his door shut in his secretary's face and spun around to face him. "I know there's not enough alcohol in the world to make me black out! James was feeding me some cock and bull story about Abby dragging me out of a bar and driving me home!"

"I-" He tried to spin some lie. She cut him off. "What did you give me? I know you fucking gave me something. That crosses the fucking line."

Burton sagged back in his chair and sighed. In his office James was listening to this on his ear piece and cheering her on, silently.

"I wasn't sure if I could trust you. Don't worry, there's no side effects beside loss of memory. You're absolutely right, I did cross the line and I am profoundly sorry."

She doubted that very highly. He was profoundly sorry she didn't blame the blackout on alcohol.

"You tell me why it's so important to have James gone by the end of the week. You tell me now, or we're through." She gestured around his grand office, "I'll walk away from all this."

Christine could see him battling with himself before he waved for her to sit down. "I'll tell you."

She sat down, her entire body almost quivering with anger. "I'm waiting."

"Your suspicions about me years ago were entirely correct. I work for several very rich very powerful people. They want the research that comes out of here."

"That's what your corporation already gets! Try again."

"They want it all. Lester censors what they can have. Connor is working on a device that can open anomalies. My hope is he'll be able to refine it into opening them when and where we want."

"So that's New Dawn?"

He sat up straight in surprise, "How the hell do you know about that?"

"You hired an operative, not a nitwit." She fired back. "Connor blabbed to Abby about it when he was drunk. Didn't you read about Claudia Brown?"

"One simple woman changes into another woman. Big deal. We're thinking larger than that. With you controlling the ARC as far as the home office is concerned, my investors get what they want."

"So you want me to be a puppet?"

"Don't act surprised. You knew going into this that's what I wanted you for."

"Fine. How much are you paying me for this?"

"We agreed on a hundred thousand."

"That was for Lester gone."

"Which you still haven't delivered."

She ignored him. "You want the whole ARC with nobody filtering what you can have? That's expensive, and you don't have it without me."

He didn't have time to dicker around with her and he just jumped to his final offer. "Ten million. Payable however you like, Swiss account, gold bullion, bearer bonds. Your choice."

"And I keep the ministry off your back while you do heaven knows what to the time line?"

He was pleased she was finally getting it. "Exactly. Imagine what a better world this would be if Hitler never rose, or Stalin. We can do so much good." She knew he was lying. Imagine how rich they could be if they went back in time and dug up a millennium's worth of precious metals or took over the middle east before anyone cared about oil.

"That's annually?"

He yelped, "That's one time only!"

"You're asking me to betray my country. I might be easy but I'm not cheap."

He actually gritted his teeth as he conceded the point. "Fine. Ten million. Annually. But Lester better be fucking gone. My investors are getting impatient."

Mishi could reign her in later, after the project had succeeded. She thought she was scary? Chairman Miyanaga would squish her like a bug and not bat an eye. He personally had met Sukara's boss twice and both time he felt as if he had been lucky to escape with his life. Not everyone at those meetings had been so fortunate. He smiled charmingly and an old saying drifted up in his mind. You pays your money and you takes your chances...

She smiled back at him, thinking she had the upper hand. "You have a deal."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

James was delighted she got him to be so candid. That delight extended to him offering to make stir-fry for supper. "I feel like we've had a major breakthrough. We still don't know why the deadline but we've got some of the blanks filled in." He babbled on while she watched him amused from her seat at the bar.

"Yup."

He raised the only other point he had, "You do know that when this is over probably the most I'll be able to pay you is sixty or eighty thousand pounds a year? He offered you millions."

She shrugged, unconcerned. "I lied. I'm cheap but not easy."

"Really? The amounts you've charged to my account the times you had my card would argue otherwise."

She laughed. "That was to convince Abby! It was for purely professional reasons." Mostly. Sorta mostly. Looking good _was_ looking professional!

He was highly skeptical. "Four hundred pounds on make-up?" So maybe she had taken a little advantage to get the good stuff. "I had a moment of weakness. I'm not normally that drawn to expensive things." Somehow, she couldn't quite meet his eye when she said that.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

**A/N** : Y'know, I'll suspend my disbelief for a lot of reasons but three whole weeks without a creature attack would be a little unlikely wouldn't it? I think some beasty from way back when will be making an appearance in the next chapter! **Grins**! Please review if I've entertained you at all.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own Primeval, I think it's a fantastic show and I just enjoy playing with the characters.

Thank you so so much everyone that has review this or favorited it. It makes me so happy to know that it's not just floating out there in the internet mist, someone **likes** it!

Chapter 9

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Not so bright and much too early Wednesday morning both their cell phones went off. James snatched his up of the bedside table with one smooth motion and managed to answer as if he was already awake at four in the morning as he listen to the automated message. Meanwhile in his second bedroom, Christine fumbled for her phone, dropped it on the floor and dragged it back up on the bed by the cord. By which time it had already gone to voice mail.

She was still navigating through the voice mail menu and yawning when James urgently knocked on her door. "Christine? There's an anomaly. We have to go." He called through the door before bolting back to his room before she opened the door and saw him in his boxers. No fear of that. It took her a full minute of blinking and rubbing her eyes before she could even toss the blanket off. She climbed out of bed and started to pull clothes out of her closet while she finally got her phone to play the voice mail. It was an automated message, three simple words. "Sunburst. Report in." Whoever thought it was clever to codename the ARC 'Sunburst' should be shot, in her humble opinion. That wasn't in any way influenced by the fact it was 4:13 in the morning.

Her mood didn't get any better as she walked out into the living room with a hairbrush in her hand hoping that James would still be in his room fussing. He wasn't. James was standing by the front door waiting on her. Damn men for not having to deal with bedhead. He was shifting anxiously from foot to foot as he finished knotting his tie. Now he looked completely impeccable, like he had the normal hour to get ready instead of less than ten minutes. At that moment she hated him. Naturally, he didn't notice. "Ready? We've got to go."

"Yes yes," she replied irritably as she grabbed up her purse. "I'm glad you're driving."

For his own personal health and safety he managed to hide his amusement as he watched her struggle to put her long, thick hair to rights in the passenger seat. The tidy coiffed bun she preferred wasn't going to be possible in a moving vehicle unless she had a can of industrial strength hairspray stashed in her purse. She didn't. Finally she gave up and just pulled it back into a high ponytail before she started to apply makeup. She was actually growling in annoyance as she dug around in her purse for a tube of...something...that was eluding her. He made a mental note to steer clear of her when she was rushed in the mornings.

The night shift tech, Johnathan Reilly, called him with an update about fifteen minutes after the automated system made the call that alerted the key staff that there was an anomaly.

"Sir, it's in the country, about three hours north of here. The night team left in the 'chopper when the ADD went off, Becker's gathering the regular team, he's planning on relieving them with the day shift squad as soon as Abby and Connor get here."

"Right. Good. I'll be there in about thirty." James made the very important call that they had time to go through a drive through for breakfast. He whipped his car up in a McDonalds parking lot and got in the drive through lane, neatly cutting off some hippy in a Prius that was taking too long to pull around. His gut protested and he ignored it. Anything was better than a stale muffin from the vending machine. Now his phone was chirping at him again.

"What do you want?" He asked her while reading a text. She leaned over him to look at the menu and he rolled his eyes. "It's McDonalds Christine, the menu hasn't changed in thirty years! Hurry up and pick something." Connor wanted to take some new piece of equipment with them and experiment.

Great. That couldn't possibly go wrong.

She glared at him as she finally decided on what she wanted. "Unlike you, I don't eat here all the time, I have standards." She sneered back at him. Two 4:30's in one day was never shaping up to be a good day, in her opinion.

He ordered for them both and got her the largest coffee they had. Maybe she'd be in a better mood after caffeine. It worried him that she could be just as grumpy as him sometimes. His grumpiness this early in the morning and her grumpiness this early in the morning was bouncing and feeding off each other. Together they were creating a cloud of grumpiness that could, if not destroy the office, at least reduce some weak person to tears before the sun was up properly. He was looking forward to it.

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The operations floor was all abuzz when they finally arrived. It was like an anthill that had been kicked over. The techs were frantically rushing around loading sensitive equipment on the trucks and Becker was actually bouncing on his toes in his eagerness to get on the road. They only had one chopper so he was driving the three hours to relieve his night shift squad.

Speaking of, they reported in. Johnathan spun around at the ADD and waved Lester over. "They've located the anomaly. It's a field, down in a little hollow out in the middle of nowhere." Johnathan passed over one of the extra earpieces Jess kept at the station and Lester hurriedly switched it on so he could listen in, and if necessary give orders. The words, 'back seat driver' did not occur to him. He was a manager. He managed. Christine reached around them both and snagged herself an earpiece out of the drawer just before Johnathan slid it shut.

_'We've got it locked and it's out of sight in this hollow as long as we keep people away. The nearest village is about twenty kilometers away, there's just scattered farms here. We don't see any houses.'_

_'Did you find the creature?' _Becker's voice drifted over the line.

_'Negative sir. I'm leaving two men to guard the site while the rest of us spread out in a search pattern. We don't see any tracks or anything.'_

One of his men waved him over to a soft bit of dirt on one side of the little depression in the field."What do you make of that?" He gestured to the ground. Captain Haverly blinked a few times before he switched his earpiece to send.

_'I take it back. There are tracks. Very odd. I'm sending a photo to you.' _

Technology was a wonderful thing. He snapped two pictures with his phone, the second one with his pistol next to the tracks to show the scale and sent them on to Johnathon. The tech forwarded them to the ADD system and brought them up on the big screen.

"What the hell makes tracks like that?" Johnathan wondered aloud.

"Dunno." Becker was deadly serious as his brain went over all the possible horrible monsters that could generate a footprint like that. "It can't be good news."

What they were looking at was an oval shaped, long, narrow imprint that was divided into three separate segments, deeply depressed into the soft dirt. Each segment was longer than the pistol that Captain Haverly had helpfully placed beside it. That would mean the foot of this creature was roughly the size and shape of a baseball bat, just a bit wider.

"Some sort of flying insect?" Christine hazarded a guess based on her experience with the future world. "It hasn't got toes. Maybe that's the creatures whole body and not a footprint."

"I surely hope so." Becker grimaced. "I've had enough of giant bugs to last one lifetime. We're about due for some little ones."

Captain Haverly came back on the line. _'We've found another track, almost three meters away. It must have hopped or jumped. I really hope that isn't it's natural stride. We're following it.'_

Becker pressed his earpiece._ 'Send the chopper back for us. We can't take the time to drive it.'_

_'Will do.'_

Burton arrived while this was going on. He was being appraised on his own earpiece of the team's lack of progress finding the creature. Good. This was shaping up to be a textbook operation. Silently, he walked up to the ADD and tugged on Christine's arm. She glanced around at him and he pulled her a little ways away from the rest, beyond earshot.

She pulled her arm back. "What?"

"You go with them. I've got another mission for you. My team is already there scouting. You go with them and muddle them as best you can to give my team a chance."

She was confused. "What? Of course the team is there, we were just talking to them."

He actually rolled his eyes at her and glanced around to be sure no one was paying attention to them. "_My_ team Christine. My investors team. They're trying to capture creatures. Ring a bell? It's what you did. Go with them and do what you can to give my team more time. Oh, and the bug in Lester's phone isn't working. See if you can fix it before you go."

Christine didn't have much time to process all this before Burton, with his hand on her elbow _again_, pulled her back over to the ADD. He started talking just loud enough that the crowd around the ADD could hear him. "I want you to see the team in action. Go with them and see if something _jumps out at you_-" He smirked at the incredibly dark humor, "to improve efficiency."

Smoothly she removed her arm from his hand, "Right. Any other instructions for me?"

Burton thought deeply for a moment. "Don't get eaten?"

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The chopper had to refuel before it could leave again, giving them almost an hour to bite their nails waiting on it to return and refuel. The biting of the nails was metaphorical. Jess arrived and relieved Johnathan, who despite the excitement went on home. He had been on duty from ten pm yesterday and was eager to get some sleep. Burton disappeared back into his office and after it became apparent that they weren't going to find the creature immediately Lester followed his example.

Christine went off to her own office, still keeping the earpiece turned on just in case. She gave it a few minutes then sent a text to James. _'You blasted man, what the hell did you do with that file you were supposed to give me? It's certainly not in my inbox.' _

He was certainly on the ball this morning. _'That's because you were supposed to come get it you wretched woman, and I wouldn't touch your ...inbox... for all the tea in China.' _She suppressed a smile. He had even managed to include a crude double entendre in his reply. This new playful side of him was...intriguing. She drew her attention back to her problems right now.

He'd be listening to 'blasted' a.k.a. the bug in the wall socket in Burton's office, awaiting the next move in this game. It wouldn't do to keep him waiting then. She got up and waltzed over there. Burton's secretary wasn't in yet so she just knocked on the door jam and walked in, shutting the door behind her. The very first Mishi agent she had positively identified was oh-so-busy playing spider solitaire on his computer.

"Yes?"

She gave a dour smile, "I see you're hard at work then. I need another bug. I'll just swap the one in Lester's phone for a new one. I don't have time to to fiddle with it."

He smirked. "What on earth makes you think I keep extra illegal listening devices here?" At her baleful stare he relented. "Okay, I do. Just in case, you understand." He put his briefcase on the desk and rummaged around in the liner for a second before pulling out a slender case, smaller than box of dental floss. It was just large enough to hold three little listening devices. He selected the top one and jotted the number down, once for her, once for him. "Here, and here's the number to call to listen to it."

Her hand closed around it as he handed it over, "Thank you."

That was the hard part. She sauntered across the building to James's office and trusted that he would have manufactured some reason to leave before she got there. She was right. His door was wide open and his phone was laying on the desk. Exactly on the middle of his desk. With the back cover off.

_'Subtle James,'_ she thought to herself. It was the work of a moment to slide the new bug in place and oh, look at the time. She had to get to the roof or she'd miss her ride and that meant she'd just have to dispose of the broken bug instead of returning it to Burton. Which would be pretty hard considering that James left it on the floor at that club. Her lack of a broken bug would be hard to explain if he asked for it in the next five minutes.

At that moment Burton had his own problems and the location of the bug that had stopped transmitting wasn't even on his mind. His problem was standing right in front of him and looked like a puppy that just couldn't understand why everyone wasn't pleased he had destroyed the new leather couch. Connor actually thought he would be happy about this? The brash young man had darted in to spill the good news just a moment after Christine left.

Burton did not see it as good news. "Explain that to me again Connor!" He snapped, "If the project is secret...that word means that means _we don't talk about it_...why the hell did you _**ASK LESTER**_ if you could try out the device? I'm waiting." He was absolutely furious and was struggling to hold it in.

Connor had been in hot water plenty of times before so he refrained from stuttering off into the 'but, but, but,' game and just skipped to the only part he knew Burton would care about. "He doesn't know." Connor tried desperately to dig himself out of this one, "I just said experiment, I didn't say which one, I work on things for him too..." His voice trailed off.

It wasn't working. "But he's going to ask if it worked, right?" Burton snapped back at him, "He's going to want to know what it was supposed to do at some point right? You write reports on what you work on, he's going to notice!"

"Please, I didn't mean to let it slip, it just happened. I was so looking forward to making sure it worked before I said anything and anyway he'd find out eventually. I mean, I can't test it without him knowing!" At Burton's angry glare he kept digging the hole deeper, "We go to every anomaly, he'd find out."

With much dint of effort Burton got a grip on his temper and reminded himself that reducing Connor to a weepy apologetic puddle, while something he'd been longing to do for quite a while, would not be helpful to the current situation. "Fine. He would find out eventually but I'd prefer it if that eventually didn't happen for another few weeks, okay? Can you keep it a secret for a little while longer?"

Connor was so happy he thought he was out of trouble he'd have agreed to anything. "Sure, yeah, whatever you say. Won't say another word, lips are zipped." He even made the ultra annoying gesture of actually zipping his lips.

Burton graced him with a small smile. "Fine. No harm done." A window popped up on is computer. Abby was in the lab a-_fucking_-gain. He clicked it shut before Connor could see, although from his position cringing at the door he shouldn't be able to. Sheer irritation at her ruining his plans Monday night had him talking before he had fully thought things out.

As if all was forgiven in an ultra smooth voice he asked, "How was the club?"

The other man was thoroughly confused. "What?"

"Monday night? The Typhoon club? I saw Abby there. She said she was meeting someone." Girlfriends was what she had said but did Connor know that for certain? He wasn't there. Abby would keep her mouth shut about Christine wouldn't she? If she didn't it didn't really matter. Connor was becoming unnecessary at this point, and a loudmouthed liability. Hector might be getting a double fee this weekend.

Connor's scatterbrain finally remembered her telling him about picking up a mate. "Yeah. She didn't say much about it." If she had then he had been too engrossed in his World of Warcraft battle to pay attention enough to remember. What had she said anyway? Connor was wracking his brain trying to remember her exact words.

Burton seemingly ignored Connor's confusion and sailed on with his explanation. "Yeah. Who was that big strapping bloke anyway? She seemed very chummy with him."

"Huh?" Connor looked blankly back at him. Burton pressed on.

"That guy she was meeting? Who was it? He looked like a football player to me."

Now Connor's eyes were bulging out of his head. "What?" He screeched. Now it was coming back to him. "She said she was meeting her old girlfriends from the zoo! One of them had been dumped or something."

"Oh sorry Connor," Now he pretended to notice Connor's agitation, "I didn't see any other girls. Just the one man sitting with her at that table in the corner. It was dark though, maybe she didn't see me." He paused. "He seemed very fit. Like a body builder almost. Sure you don't know him? I can't believe she didn't mention seeing me."

"She didn't mention seeing you." Connor echoed as Burton played on all his nerdy, non-athletic, non-body builder insecurities. "She said she was meeting girls, not a man!"

"Sorry Connor. I would say that there could have been some misunderstanding, but as the engineers say, K.I.S.S." He spread his hands wide and looked like he pitied Connor for a brief instant. It was the 'keep it simple stupid' that sealed the deal. He went from disbelief to shock to anger to betrayed hurt in just a few seconds. He burst out, "I can't believe she's cheating on me. She's been a bit weird lately but I didn't really think about why!"

He thought back to that night. Abby walking out of the room when her phone rang, holding the whole conversation where he couldn't hear. He hadn't thought anything of it at the time! How long had this been going on?

Burton talking shook him out of his stupor. "I'm sorry for you Connor, but you'll have to get past it and fight with her later. If you're distracted while you're trying to track down a creature one of you could die." Connor was just where he wanted him. Furious at Abby and absolutely not going to say a word about why. If he was lucky they'd both be so distracted they'd get eaten and save him the money of having them dealt with.

Connor was taking a few deep breaths as his mind frantically tried to think up some other, _any other_, explanation for her lying to him and meeting some strange man in a club. Nothing was coming to mind. Matt's voice over the intercom broke in.

_'The chopper will be lifting off in five minutes. All personal responding to the anomaly go to the roof.'_

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The chopper landed them in the field near the anomaly. Christine waited while the team ranged ahead of her. She wanted to get her bearings. The soldiers led by the intrepid Captain Becker were spreading out in a search pattern as they approached the anomaly site. Connor, Abby and Matt were right in the middle, EMD's raised and ready for action.

She herself only had a pistol she'd rather not have everyone know about. "Matt," she called out and cursed herself for not taking a side trip to the armory before getting on the chopper, "got an extra EMD?"

"Yeah." He replied, eyes scanning the terrain, "we'll get you one once we get to the site. We brought a few extra." That would be what those in boxes that some of the squad were carrying with one hand while the other kept the business end of a weapon scanning around.

She felt a sigh of relief and then they were at the site. Captain Haverly was waiting on them. "We found more tracks, heading southwest. I've got most of my men in pairs searching that way. It's either huge and I don't understand why we can't see it or it's several little creatures that are staying together."

"Show me on the map where you've looked." Becker requested. Christine casually got in close enough that she got a good look at the map they were using. "There's roads here and here where there's a good long way that's visible. I put a man here, here and here to watch for them crossing the roads. If they haven't, or it hasn't, then it has to be in this area here."

'This' area was an enormous expanse of pasture, hedgerows, small stands of trees, a few duck ponds and more overgrown pasture. It was going to take them all day to search it. "Any people?"

"No, fortunately. The nearest residence is two kilometers away and I've already send a man over to tell them about the search and rescue exercise were running in this area."

Becker mused it over, "Search and rescue exercise. Good cover."

Captain Haverly preened. "I thought so." His radio going off interrupted them. _"Sir, we found something. It's hard to see...oh shit!-"_ Screaming and gunfire was the only thing being transmitted. "_Daniels? Daniels report!"_ Haverly barked into the comm. There was silence.

"_Johnson here, Daniels is dead. It's one big insect creature, it's tall, four meters, mottled green and brown and sir, it blends. It's better camoflagued than we are. I hit it twice and it just shrugged it off. It's heading Southwest towards sector four."_

Haverly spun around to the map again and pointed to the right sector. "They're here." He started calling out directions to his men in the field to have them converge on the area that the late Corporal Daniels and his buddy were searching. Becker saw where that area was and with a wave of his hand, all the reinforcements he brought bolted that direction just behind the optimistic medic that was lugging a stretcher, just in case.

There were only the two guards left on the locked anomaly and herself. Christine looked around the empty campsite and came to a decision. She couldn't be a monkey wrench waiting around here under the suspicious eye of Captain Becker's night shift soldiers. Christine flipped the lid open on a few boxes before she found one that had an EMD in it. She grabbed it and headed alone in the same direction everyone else was running. She ran until she was just out of sight of the base camp before she slowed to a walk and pulled out her phone. She texted James first,

"_Blasted jerk, why the hell didn't you warn me I might be in the field?" _She couldn't even wait for his reply before she was calling Burton.

He answered on the second ring, "Yes?"

"What do you expect me to do again? I don't know how to get in touch with your team. The creature already killed one soldier." Christine kept a wary eye out for anyone, or anything as she walked along looking for the others.

"What's going on?"

"The. Creature. Killed. One. Soldier. Already." She carefully pronounced the words like he was hard of hearing.

Burton sounded...pleased? Eager? "What is it?" He demanded. Definitely eager she decided. That probably wasn't a good sign for her. Alone. In these woods.

"They think it's some sort of insect. They didn't get much of a read off on it. Tell me, how were you planning on getting the creature away from here?"

Burton paused for an instant and she could tell he was debating with himself on if he should tell her the truth before he finally spoke. "The little ones they pack out, they can't grab a bigger one unless they get really lucky."

She was keeping both eyes on her surroundings as she talked on the phone and headed towards where the action was. Still, she nearly missed it. It wasn't much more than arms length from her, pressed perfectly still against a tree. It was looking at her in an exceedingly creepy way. Her brain didn't want to process what exactly she was looking at but to be fair, it was very disconcerting to make eye contact with a giant insect. Christine froze as her eyes roamed over its tall, narrow body. Its legs and feelers were deceptively delicate and a dark, earthy shade of green. Its arms were folded in front of its body like it was peacefully praying.

"I found a little one. It looks like a praying mantis, except this one is as high as my waist." She blocked out Burton's cries of 'excellent!' and slowly pulled up her EMD. The creature didn't move, then it did. In a blur too fast for her to see it suddenly ripped the EMD from her hand. Unfortunately for the creature, as it grabbed the EMD and yanked it, her finger was jerked against the trigger. She was pulled off balance and hit the ground, rolling away from the giant bug that was now towering over her.

The EMD bolt had struck it from point blank range. For just one terrifying second she thought that it was going to shrug the hit off before coming after her when it started to sway.

It collapsed slowly, in a crumpled heap that was still grasping weakly at her.

She let out the breath she didn't know she was holding and picked up her phone from where she dropped it. "I got it. What do you want me to do with it?"

"Hide it," Burton snapped, "Shoot it again just to be sure it stays down and hide it." Zapping it again was easy enough for her. At least that stopped the twitching.

Christine didn't bother asking where the hell she was supposed to hide it. There wasn't a conveniently located bush she could shove the damn thing under. Two seconds later it didn't matter. "Gotta go." She whispered and hung up as Matt and Abby barreled over to her. "I was just about to call you. I found a little one." She managed to sound pleased with herself as she suppressed the memory of how _incredibly_ fast the bug was when it finally lashed out at her. Abby reached out and helped pull her off the ground.

"I knew I heard a weapon discharge," Matt said as he called for backup to carry the insect back to the anomaly. "Abby? Are they pack creatures?"

"No. Not if they're like modern ones." Abby rolled it over onto its back and examined it intently, "This is a male. The females are almost always bigger in the mantis family."

"So the one that killed Daniels is female?" Matt was keeping a wary eye scanning the surroundings. "Will that help us figure out where it went?"

"Not really. And I can't be sure but this one might just be immature. They moult you know. I didn't get a good look at the other one."

Matt replied sourly, "Great."

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Christine tagged along when they dragged the little mantis back to the anomaly and she watched curiously as they unlocked it long enough to toss the creature back through. Becker's voice came back on the line. "We've got a visual on the big one. The EMD's aren't affecting it. We're going to need real guns-" He was cut off by screaming, lots of screaming.

Connor came on the circuit, "It's coming back towards the anomaly site! It's fast!" Christine and Abby exchanged a significant look and then they both dove for the dubious cover of the treeline on the opposite side of the clearing from where the Mantis was coming from. The two soldiers that were guarding the site and Matt ranged themselves in a rough line, slightly behind where the anomaly was with the locking device at their backs.

"Abby, if it comes here then open the anomaly, we'll herd it back through." He didn't elaborate on how exactly he was planning on doing that if it was shrugging off the EMD's.

Abby eased her way around the tree she was pressed against and hustled over to the computer that controlled the locking device. Christine stayed right where she was for a moment, then groaned and darted over to stand by Abby with her borrowed and allegedly useless EMD sweeping the treeline along with the men.

Matt spoke, "Becker! Where is it? Do you have a visual?"

"No. It's crazy fast, almost like a predator and when it holds still it's almost invisible in this terrain." They could hear him breathing hard as he jogged while he talked.

The team leader bobbed his head irritably, "So you don't know where it is then?"

"Nope. We lost contact. But it was headed your way."

"I'll put out the welcome mat then." Matt muttered, momentarily forgetting about the radio.

Connor came out with a slightly inappropriate caution for him, "Be careful you don't become the welcome Matt!"

"Connor, now is not the time for bad puns!" Matt snapped and then the time for witty tension killing one liners was past. The creature...appeared. It wasn't there, and then it was. It was enormous. It froze when it saw them and drew itself up to it's full height. It was four meters easily from its deceptively kind heart shaped head to its legs like steel cables. It folded its hands in front of it like it was saying a final prayer and froze.

"It's here Becker." Abby said when no one reported. "I'm opening the anomaly now. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Christine reflexively noted the password Abby entered while keeping one eye on the creature.

"It's looking right at me Abby." Matt said in an even tone. "Hurry up."

"Don't make eye contact, it might think you're threatening it." Abby replied as she finally clicked on the 'Unlock' button. "Do insects think that way?" Matt replied as the creature's head whipped around to see the anomaly explode into being.

"I don't know, I don't know if anyone has done any research with eye contact and insects."

"It will." Christine broke in, remembering how the little one had reacted, so still and then flying at her. Matt took her advise, "Everyone, we're going to back away slowly and try to herd it into the anomaly. Stay out of the creature's reach."

Together the soldiers and Matt stepped backwards and edged around the sides of the creature. Becker and the rest of the team showed up behind it about then with a loud soldierly crashing sound. Silent stalkers they were not.

The creature slowly spun its head around in a 180 so that it was looking directly behind itself at Becker. It remembered Becker. He had been annoying the creature with the little zappy things for awhile now. If it had been a dog then it would be peeling its lips up and letting out a low rumbling growl that promised violence and bloodshed.

As it was, it merely swung its body around without moving its eyes off of Becker one single millimeter.

"That's really creepy," Connor let a little fear color his voice from his place on the edge of the line. "Didn't know they could do that."

"Don't make eye contact," Matt started to say and then it was too late. The creature snapped its arms open and dove at Becker. He had seen the thing in action and jumped side ways, firing as he went. Everyone else followed his lead, shooting the creature. Finally the EMD's were having an effect. Under the combined onslaught of both teams it staggered a few steps towards Becker and then with the last of its energy it dove at the prey that had eluded it.

Becker jumped straight up in the air just as the creature crashed down next to him and its arms snapped shut with an audible **click** directly under his boots before it just started uncontrollable twitching and spasming from all the electrical shocks.

Becker landed and jumped a few more times to get away from the flailing limbs before he stopped to get his breath. "Who says white men can't jump?" He gasped out, it wasn't that funny but at the moment it was the most hilarious thing anyone had ever said. "Let's get a line on this beasty and drag him back through." Matt ordered quickly. "I don't know how it's even able to twitch now so let's be quick about it."

They ended up binding its arms together with some rope. "It can chew it off when it wakes up," Abby told them. Personally Becker didn't really care if ever got its arms free. He had lost two good men to the creature and had another four that were mauled by the thing. The chopper had been converted into life flight and was busy taking the wounded back to the ARC. Two of them weren't that badly hurt, just knocked about and maybe some broken ribs.

Jamison and McCormick on the other hand had actually been grabbed by the creature and crushed between its powerful arms. Only their flak vests kept the rough exoskeleton from ripping holes in their chests but that didn't protect against compression injuries. Jamison had a crushed chest and at least one collapsed lung. McCormick was the same, with additional injuries from where the creature had bitten his shoulder, nearly severing his arm. The medic wasn't very hopeful. He was using all the plasma he had brought to try and keep McCormick from bleeding to death. The two medics were working frantically to keep both men alive as the chopper took off.

Abby and Christine watched as the soldiers worked together shove the creature head first towards the anomaly. They shoved from this side, pushing the damned thing back where it came from. Nobody was going through to drag it, and risk getting trapping in a world where those things lived.

Matt, Becker and Haverly were conferring. The night shift had been up since six the day before. "They're tired. We can't risk it."

Haverly argued, but Becker overruled him. "No. You've been on duty almost eighteen hours now. Your team will guard the site in case more of them head back and my team will do another sweep of the area to make sure we've got them all."

Christine was discretely eavesdropping from a short distance away. She was leaning against a tree trunk and acting worn out. It wasn't that hard an act to pull off. That creature diving for her was bring up very bad memories of the future predator that grabbed her. The sounds it made while it was attacking her and Helen laughing in the background before she finally shot it would stay in her nightmares forever. Ruthlessly, Christine shoved the memory away and focused on what was going on now.

Behind her Becker was assigning soldiers to sweep different areas. Ahead of her, standing right on the edge of the clearing where they had a little bit of privacy and yet were in full view of all the others, Connor and Abby seemed to be fighting. It was their body language that was giving it away.

She was leaning in, her hand on his chest and talking earnestly. Connor was holding himself stiffly, leaning a little back from her and he had a frozen, cold expression on his face. Whatever Abby was saying it apparently failed to move him because he roughly pushed her hand away and walked off. Abby stared after him, dejected for a moment before anger took over. She shouted something at his back and it wasn't quite loud enough for Christine to hear but one of the soldiers standing guard on that side evidently did. He looked shocked she said whatever she said before he turned his face back to his sector.

Abby glared at Connor for a minute before stomping over to sit down next to Christine. She didn't say anything. "I'm going to recommend that we bring camp chairs to future anomalies." Christine said to break the tension that was flying off Abby in waves. It worked. The angry blonde gave a short laugh before resuming glaring at Connor.

Christine made a show of following Abby's sight line. "What's with him?"

"He's an ass." Abby snapped, "an absolute ass."

"Well, yes." Christine rolled her eyes. "He's a man. That's his default setting. What's he done now?"

"He thinks I'm cheating on him. He actually asked if I met a man that night I picked you up!" Abby growled out the words. "I couldn't tell him the truth and he could tell I was keeping something from him." Abby scrubbed at her eyes, she _wasn't crying_ damn it, "He won't trust me."

Oh dear. Christine squeezed her hand. "I'm so sorry Abby. You can tell him the truth on Monday. It'll all be over then."

"Are you certain?"

"Positive." Christine replied confidently. Monday was the first of the month. It would all be over one way or the other.

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It was late afternoon before Christine waited with the last team to fly back to the ARC. They hadn't found any other creatures but that didn't mean Burton's people hadn't. She watched as they packed up all the equipment except for the locking device. Based on the comments she heard, this was unusual.

"I've got something I want to try out." Connor finally said when he had to stop someone from dismantling and packing up the locking device a second time.

"Really?" Matt overheard him and walked over. "What is it?"

Connor looked guilty for a second before he spoke. "It's a prototype. It should close the anomaly completely."

Matt raised an eyebrow. "Remember the very first time we met?"

Connor blushed. "That one was broken. This one should work, but just in case it doesn't go as planned I want the locking device still ready."

"Right then. When were you going to tell the rest of us about this?" Becker deftly reached behind Connor and picked up boxy piece of tech that he didn't recognize off the table. "I've definitely seen more ergonomic closing devices." It was almost the size and shape of a classic Nintendo console. Becker examined it intently and ignored Connors immediate demand that he give it back.

"It's just a prototype!" Connor yelped and finally succeeded in yanking it back from Becker. "I just going to try it out really quick and if it worked, lovely, if it didn't then it shouldn't effect the anomaly at all."

Matt read between the lines. "So you were going to just fire it off without mentioning anything to us? What if it didn't work the way you were planning? What if it worked just like the _**last**_ time you tried to close an anomaly without even warnin' us?" Matt's accent was getting more pronounced as he got more pissed off. "Connor-"

Connor actually interrupted him, "All right! I'm sorry! I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up, that's all." Matt didn't seem appeased but he was willing to hold off on the lecture until they got back to the ARC. "Fine then. Try it out."

Becker called for the security detail to focus on the anomaly while Connor aimed his Nintendo-console-lookalike at the sealed ball of energy. He raised it up and pressed a button.

The thing didn't even emit a light. Becker lowered his gun, disappointed. "Was something meant to happen just then?"

Connor hadn't lowered his newest toy. "It's emitting radio waves, on a direct counterpoint from what the anomaly opens on, it's like the different poles of a magnet- Look! It's working." The anomaly started to actually slowly shrink down with little glimmering ripples. "It's all about the beta waves-" His explanation was cut off when his device finally made a noise. Unfortunately it was a loud bang and then smoke started drifting out of it. "Oh damn." Connor cursed and looked as if he was going to toss it down.

"It worked a little." Becker pointed out, "the anomaly is almost half as big as it was earlier." Connor perked up a hair. "Yeah. It worked a little. It must have overloaded the capacitors. Maybe if I reline the tubes with ceramic..." Connor stopped talking as he realized that no one that was listening had the slightest idea what he was talking about. "I can fix this." He said firmly.

The chopper returning for the last group of people drowned out anything else he would have said. "Get the locking device broken down and packed." Matt ordered. Becker had already designated the pair of soldiers that would stay until the anomaly vanished for good, or their shift was up. If it was still there in the evening then another pair would drive out and relieve them. They had learned that leaving an anomaly unattended just invited trouble.

Christine joined Abby waiting by the edge of the field. The younger woman was sitting on a box with her arms crossed, glaring at the world. "Connor's busy pissing everyone off today." Christine said as she joined her.

Abby made a non-committal noise before she finally broke down and asked who else he had offended. Christine relayed Connor's plan to test a secret device without even telling anyone what he was doing. Abby shook her head when Christine finished. "Why's he acting like such a prat?" Abby asked rhetorically, "Normally he'd be jabbering on about something as exciting as a way to close the anomalies for hours. He wouldn't try to do something like that secretly."

"I think he was told to keep it a secret." Christine said unnecessarily, in a low voice so they wouldn't be overheard. "I don't think that it was entirely his own choice."

"Really?" Angry Abby was a sarcastic Abby. "Do you think? I hate that man with a passion. How close are you with your thing? I need to get Connor out from under his thumb before someone gets hurt."

"Monday Abby." Christine said with one eye on the soldiers loading the last of the equipment into the chopper, they moved as their seats were taken away and heaved on board, "Just wait until Monday."

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At the ARC Christine called the bug in Burton's office and didn't hear anything. Then she called the one in James's office and was treated to an earful. He was chewing out Connor, evidently Matt had already found the time to tell him about Connor's experiment. Connor was trying to dimly hid behind the excuse that Lester said he could test it but James very quickly ripped him a new one for not actually mentioning the experimental device to the people that were standing there when he turned it on!

Between Matt and Lester tag teaming him with the guilt and the risk he was taking Christine actually felt bad for the poor man. They didn't go on for very long before Connor swore he'd never do anything so unthinking again and they let him go.

Christine heard Connor leave the office and then Becker spoke up. "That's him sorted then. I've got to go visit some people and tell them that their soldier is never coming home."

"I'm sorry Becker." James sounded truly shook up and remorseful. "Do you want me to do anything beside sign the letters?"

"No. There's nothing you can do." Becker sounded so upset that it took Christine back. She had spent troops like water to explore the future ARC. With a sudden surge of guilt she realized that she didn't even know how many men had been killed under her command.

James spoke up again. "What about the wounded?"

Matt answered him, "They all should live. Even McCormick, but the surgeon isn't certain how much use of his arm he'll have afterwards. Mattox and Renolds only had a few cracked ribs and really bad bruises. Neither one of them needed surgery and they'll be sent home tomorrow. Jamison will be transferred to a regular hospital for follow-up care once he's stable enough to move. McCormick has a chest tube and they'll transfer him also, so that their families can visit.

"It's a damn good thing we have a regular emergency room here." James commented. Burton's deep pockets were useful for one good thing. After the fungus creature adventure happened it had really highlighted the fact that they couldn't just walk into a regular hospital and explain away a dinosaur injury as 'I fell down some stairs. Onto some prehistorically large teeth.'

"Yeah, it would be awkward running to regular doctors for every little prehistoric bit of poisoning or mauling." Matt commented. There was silence for a few seconds before Matt spoke again. "We're stalling Becker. Best be on our way. I've already called Father Dowling, we can pick him up on the way to Daniel's mum's house. We'll tell Jacob's wife second."

A wife. One of the dead had a wife. It gave Christine chills thinking about the families that were ripped apart by the anomalies. Did someone go in person to tell her mum that she was dead? Or did they just do like she had done and send the official Chaplain around to break hearts and devastate lives without a second thought?

Becker commented as they left Lester's office, "I really hate doing this."

"Yeah, mate. So do I."

Christine left her office and got to the ops floor just in time to see Matt and Becker on their way out to break the news to some poor family. She felt an acute pang of guilt that she didn't even know if Captain Wilder went with the Chaplain when someone died. Who had told her mum? She pushed it all out of her mind and latched onto that cold analytical place in her soul that let her do her job and ignore everything else but accomplishing the mission.

Burton had already left for the day and it seems that James was ready to go also. She didn't have the presence of mind to pick a fight with him on the way out, even though he gave her the perfect opening by commenting lewdly on some grass stains she had acquired on her back.

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They stopped at a fish and chip shop for supper. Neither one of them felt like cooking after the day they had. Christine waited while James secured his briefcase and phone before she asked him, "Do you know who told my mum I was dead?"

James looked up from his plate, not expecting that. "Yes." He answered very slowly, "she told me about it."

"Who was it?"

"The minister had the some army chaplain call her. He told her over the phone. She didn't believe him at first and thought it was a sick joke."

Christine felt sick to her stomach. "That's horrible."

"I know." He reached out and rubbed her back companionably, "I thought so. I expect you heard Matt and Becker's conversation?" He tried to ignore the fact that she was leaning into his hand.

"Yes. I realized I don't know how the families of the soldiers I killed found out." She gulped. "They might've just got a phone call also. I was a horrible person."

"Hey," he could see how upset she was and he tried to head it off. "You can't feel guilty about that, you can't change it. It's in the past."

"Was it your idea to have Matt and Becker tell people in person?"

"No. It was Becker's. Believe it or not I was never in a position to think about notifying families before the ARC."

"Yeah. This isn't exactly a normal office job." Christine sighed hugely then went back to picking at her chips. "I've got to get this mess with Burton finished up, then I can start to deal with myself." She went back to picking at her chips and trying to figure out how to bring down Mishi in less than a week.

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After dinner Christine disappeared into her room and James took the chance to catch up on his bills. He was seated in his office balancing his checkbook when Christine came in. She silently took up the briefcase that was next to him and picked up his phone that was on the desk. He watched her while she took the compromised things away.

"Yes?" He asked when she returned empty handed a moment later. Christine sat down in the chair next to his desk. "I just got a call from Burton. He wants to introduce me to some people this weekend to discuss my new...responsibilities."

"You mean after I've been disgraced and arrested? Hauled off to the clinker?" They still didn't have any legal evidence to bust Burton.

"Something like that." She replied cheerfully. While he was glad she seemed to recovered from her earlier bout of self recrimination, something about her perkiness at his scheduled career _and life_ obliteration got under his skin. "Here." He said dourly, "make yourself useful then." James pressed the mess of papers he had been working on into her hand.

Christine kept that little smile on her face while she sorted out what she had. It was the electric bill payment stub, the check and the envelope. She rearranged it together and sealed the envelope. A package of stamps drifted down in front of her along with a stamp that had his address printed on it.

She kept talking while she neatly fixed a stamp on and stamped the return address. "We might possibly push him into doing something rash. I have some plans."

Now he was interested. "What sort of plans? I thought you were going to fiddle with my address book?" He had been rather looking forward to that. He would never say anything now, but he had been hoping she could forge in a direct number to the Queen. Suitably disguised, of course.

She shot that idea down firmly, "We haven't got time for any cleverness with paperwork, I wish I had thought of that weeks ago but I didn't realize what we were dealing with. We've got to go for the more direct approach. If we can get him to monologue in front of the ARC's security cameras then we can use that, but he has to confess to something really bad."

"What could be worse than conspiracy to commit murder and treason?" James asked while he handed her the next wad of papers.

"Being in the pay of Mishi, for one. But we don't have any legally obtained evidence. He's careful. Everything he's told me he could just deny saying. If I record him it's not admissible in court so it's the same as if he never said it. Legally."

If just the MI-6 was involved then the line could get a little...blurry but unfortunately the good ol' chaps in the Home Office were a stickler for the rules. Fair play and all that rot. Christine mentally damned their goody two shoes ways and looked down at the other papers he passed over. This lot was the board bill for Star. The barn had gone up a bit in the last three years. "Do you want me to take this one over?"

"By all means." Then his conscience twinged him. She'd only gotten one check so far and if their plan worked, there wouldn't be another one. "When you like. I've been paying it for so long that it doesn't really matter if I keep it a few more months."

Her lips quirked up at him. "All right then. Thank you." Then she drew her attention back to the matter at hand. "Wiretapping laws only apply if there's an expectation of privacy. That doesn't exist in front of a security camera so if he talks in front of a camera that's visible in a public area we've got him. No matter how many connections he has, I can get that tape into enough different hands he can't squish it. We've got to put him under more stress. Convince him he has to do something rash or it's all going to come crashing down around him."

"How?"

Her face widened into a grin. "I'm so glad you asked that. I'll explain on the way, get your coat."

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**A/N:** Oh dearie dearie me! What dastardly thing does she have in mind? Then next chapter is nearly all finished and I'm just tweaking it a little before I post it. It should be up reasonably soon.

Please Review. It really inspires me to work on the story!

**More A/N**: I've done a little personal unintended research on if insects can make eye contact and I can safely say that a nest of wasps eye level and arms length away are completely capable of making direct eye contact and they are completely terrifying when they do it.


	10. Chapter 10

Sorry? Long time no see? Better late than never? It's FINISHED! HURRAH! 

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"What on earth are we doing here?" James asked her as they made their way across the empty sidewalk towards one of the most popular tourist traps in the entire city. To say he was surprised that she had dragged him here, of all places was a bit of an understatement.

She was enjoying her own cleverness immensely and explained unnecessarily with an expansive wave of her hand that took in the ancient stone surroundings. "This James, is the Tower of London."

It was very late and accordingly, he was quite sarcastic. "Really? I didn't know." At her baleful look he amended his statement. "I've been here before Christine, several times. Starting with a school trip when I was nine. Why are we here?"

She pursed her lips and shrugged. "Frankly this was the only place I could think of where we could find tourists at this hour. Come on, the tour's going to start soon." She grabbed his hand and towed him into the crowd that was gathered by the entryway.

Surprised, he followed her obediently and asked again as she walked them up to the window and purchased two tickets. "What is this?"

"It's the midnight ghost tour of the tower." She leaned in closer to him and whispered intimetally his ear. "As soon as we find some foreigners, I'll take a few picture of you talking to them and giving them a brochure. Then we can go and I'll spin Burton into a paranoid tizzy in the morning."

"I see." He didn't. Not really, but then it didn't really matter.

Almost immediately Christine tilted her head as she picked up a couple of accents exclaiming over something off to her left. "Bingo. Go talk to them." She discreetly jerked her chin towards her chosen patsy and shoved James at them while she let the milling crowd sweep her away.

He wasn't sure of her plan but it couldn't hurt. To date her plotting had worked out rather well. James walked over to the older couple that was currently gawking up at the tall stone walls and talking about Jane Grey sightings. "Hello, I'm James." He smiled widely and offered his hand, "Is this your first time to London?"

It was twenty minutes before he was able to peel away from his new best friends, a pair of extremely chatty South Africans on their thirty year anniversary trip, to locate Christine perched on a the edge of a planter right next to a 'no sitting or climbing' sign back at the entrance. She looked incredibly smug. He arched an eyebrow at her.

"Was that sufficient?"

"Absolutely." She hopped down, swaying slightly as she landed and she put her hand on his chest, pressing gently, to steady herself. "Let's go home."

Was it his imagination or did she linger in his personal space an instant or two longed than she absolutely needed? James banished the thought with a shake of his head, chalking it up to the late night and lots of stress.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Burton's reaction to the photos was... a bit dramatic in her opinion.

First he raged at her for not noticing Lester meeting his contacts before, completely disregarding her protest that he hadn't met them before now or she would have noticed. Then he ranted for a while about what the papers they were exchanging could be and how that was going to reflect on him if his bosses found out.

Christine's professionalism was getting heartily offended at the tirade and she had to remind herself that this was actually good. Burton raging and stupid was her goal, but it was always hard to hear accusations of incompetence from a git like him.

If she hadn't been the one to orchastrate the circumstances, the photos certainly looked incriminating. James, mixing in with a tour group in the middle of the night, passing mysterious papers, that were actually just some maps of the city, to a couple of obviously fake tourists. They had to be fake. No real tourists could pull off those baggy shorts and that shockingly loud shirt.

When Burton finally wound down she dropped the final bombshell. "They sounded South African."

She wouldn't have taken the risk of giving him a possible lead on locating them if James hadn't found out, along with how many kids they had, what they both did and how many other countries they had visited in their holiday, they were going home in the morning and had saved the midnight ghost tour for their very last night in London. That was a shocking bit of good luck. Right now they were on a plane somewhere over Spain, completely oblivious to the amount of investigation their files were about to be subject to.

Burton sputter and cursed and Christine finally lost her temper at him. "Find out who they are! You have resources! If you don't then the people you work for certainly do, their faces are clear enough for any half decent program to match a name. Stop whining at me, I did my job." She stood up and planted her hands on his desk before stalking out, tossing a parting shot over her shoulder. "Now you do your job, work out who he was meeting."

She concentrated on radiating anger and frustration like a shield. It worked. People avoided her as she stormed to her own office. She booted up her computer and checked the telltales she had strewn about the room to be sure that no one had been in there since the day before. As far as she could tell, it was still unbugged.

One quick text later and then she and James were both eavesdropping on listening device planted in Burton's office. She spared a brief moment to wish she had gotten a camera in there somehow. For the first few minutes all she could hear was the quick tappity-tap of his keyboard. Then he made a call. In Japanese.

"_Did you receive the photographs?"_

…

"_They may be traveling under South African passports." _

…

"_You've already got a hit? They left today? Find out who they really are!"_

…

"_I most sincerely apologize. I'm afraid I let my enthusiasm get ahead of me." _Burton said humbly with just a hint of fear in his tone before quickly ending the call.

Christine leaned back in her chair and pondered where to go from here. He was afraid. The question now was only if he was afraid enough to do something rash. 

Burton left the ARC soon after in a swirl of cold fury. Christine wished again that she had a way to read his emails. Something had happened and she could only hope that things fell her way. There wasn't time to do anything else.

She was doomed to wait in frustration. She didn't dare tip her hand any more than she had already risked by dropping any more hints. The single bright glimmer happened when James came by her office complaining that her boss, he managed to infuse the word with so many other uncomplimentary meanings just with his inflection, had insisted that he stay late and complete a stack of paperwork that must be done tonight.

Christine grinned and nodded. They both deduced that Burton wanted him to stay late for a far more sinister reason than overdue paperwork. James bitched for a bit in the event they were being spied upon just to stay in character before he went back to his own side of the building, ignoring her demands that he let her take the car so she could leave at the usual time.

As soon as James left her mind started spinning all the possibilities. This was obviously an attempt to cut James out of the herd, get him isolated so Burton could... what exactly? Two possibilities jumped to the forefront of her mind, kidnap him, interrogate him, and then dispose of his body. Or just skip all that fuss and go straight to putting a bullet in his brain. How concerned was Misha about James? Would they risk keeping him alive for a while? She just didn't know.

Burton would have to take him out of the building, she decided. There weren't any conveniently large incinerators or trash compactors. There was nowhere he could hide a body. Christine did a quick mental inventory of the ARC before dismissing that possibility entirely. Oh, he could kill James and stash his body in a large bin or crawlspace or something, but the smell would give it away after a day or two. James was well enough connected that if he was discovered murdered, Burton couldn't squash the ensuing investigation.

Unless it looked like an accident. Some drug to stimulate a heart attack. She rolled the scenario over in her mind and teased out the possibilities. Middle aged man, working late, no one around to call for help, cold and stiff body discovered in the morning, so sad, so tragic. That could happen. She had to hope that James was bright enough not to eat or drink anything Burton brought him for the next few hours.

Burton would probably wait until late, when only the night shift soldiers were here secluded in their domain of gym and weapons training room before proposing some ruse to get James to leave with him. James would vanish and Burton would swear that he dropped him off at home after their impromptu meeting or dinner or whatever excuse Burton came up with. Who could contract him with James's own flatmate testifying to whatever Burton said?

She could even picture herself being interviewed. _'Yes Inspector, he staggered in drunk around 1, woke me up with his stumbling around. I didn't notice when he went out again. I haven't seen him since.'_

Meanwhile James was tied up in some interrogation room answering pointed questions about foreign bank accounts and secret transactions.

Christine focused. Burton would have to get him out of the building. He had to take that step. She firmly decided that she would meet Burton and insist that he let her tag along on his plans. James didn't have a chance alone. She shifted and felt the holster of her pistol rub against her thigh. If all else failed, they could shoot their way out. All that was left now was the waiting.

Burton walked back into the ARC without even suspecting that she knew what he was plotting. He returned around six and came straight to her office. He didn't even knock, just popped straight in like they were best friends. He wasn't agitated or nervous at all. If anything, he seemed exceptionally smug.

"Christine I need to talk to you in my office at eight. Our plans for the weekend have been canceled, the meeting's been moved up to tonight." He smirked, pleased with himself with his insinuating spy-talk. Never mind that the entire point of code phrases was so anyone listening didn't realise they were hearing a code. Amateur.

She felt no need to enlighten him. She'd led him by the hand this far, carefully guiding his decisions, now it was time to see where he toddled when freed. Christine matched his smirk. "Certainly. I expect that's why James is suddenly inundated with paperwork?"

Burton smirked again. "Something like that. Until tonight." He glided out like he owned the place.

She looked at the clock. Only a few hours to go.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Given the late hour, Christine wasn't surprised that Burton's gatekeeper was long gone. She returned the insult by of just walking into his office without knocking. He didn't seem to care. He was positively bouncing with glee, with a maniacal little glint in his eye that made her wary. He was dangerous. Burton crisply directed her to close the door before he started to explain whatever mad plan he had come up with. It was small comfort that James was listening.

He settled himself and peered at her meaningfully. She was unimpressed. "Did you find out who those people were that he was meeting?"

Burton glanced down before answering her. "Unfortunately their cover was too strong for a quick inquiry to break it. Lester must be working for someone very powerful. My... higher ups are still investigating. However they are very cross with me for not realising how highly placed James was before now." He paused dramatically. "I've got orders and you're going to help me carry them out. Monday morning his office will be yours."

She smiled a genuine smile. This was almost over. "Good. What are we going to do? I assume that we're taking him somewhere more discreet?"

He chuckled. "My dear Christine, I've got it sorted. He's not leaving the building ever again and as a bonus I can tie up a few other lose ends."

"More lose ends? Tell me," she invited Burton, surpressing the sudden stab of fear that went through her. "Inquiring minds want to know."

Burton sighed. "Connor's become a liability and Abby's just a pest. I'm going to kill three birds with one stone." He chuckled again and the slightly unhinged glint was back in his eye. Burton opened his mouth to elaborate and his phone cut him off. She could see 'Connor Temple' flashing across the screen. Burton pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Are you going to get that?" She asked politely, as if they weren't sitting here discussing how to murder the man in question.

Burton snatched up the phone on the forth ring. Christine could dimly hear Connor ramble on about particles and wave bearing for a minute before Burton cut him off. "Just wait there Connor, I'll come down and you can show me." Burton clicked his phone off and tossed it down again.

"Wait here, this will only take a few minutes. Connor insists I just have to look at some projections." Burton fastened his coat with a sharp motion of his hands. "Another thirty minutes and I'll never have to listen to his whining again. I can't wait." He sailed out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Christine waited a minute to be certain he was really gone when her phone went off. A text, from James. _'He's gone downstairs, I'll keep a lookout.' _She was so happy she could have kissed him. Her inner spy-girl was cheering at unrestricted time in Burton's office. She rummaged through the files on his desk quickly, it all looked like legitimate paperwork. He probably wouldn't leave anything obviously Mishi related in plain sight, but then he trusted her and she needed proof and the clock was ticking.

Nothing remotely useful was on top of the desk, so she started going through the drawers. The bottom most one was locked. It was like a big beacon to her, drawing her in. It was for occasions like this that she wore hair pins. Not even a minute after she found the locked drawer she had it opened and was peering eagerly inside.

It was empty, save for a gleaming silver Colt .45 and a few boxes of ammo. A Colt. It had to be a Colt. Damn cowboy gun. She pulled it out and quickly checked it. There was even one in the chamber. In a movie the plucky heroine would be ready with some blanks or something to deal with this. In real life she just didn't have a way to find out he had this gun until now...and it looked like Burton was going to be armed for the big kickoff. It might be time to rethink her plans a little. Cautiously, she broke the gun down a little, intently examining it.

_'He's coming back.'_

She set the gun back in place, relocked the drawer and barely had enough time to slide back around to her side of the desk when Burton walked back in. "Everyone is gone now. My people are running security tonight so we won't be interrupted. That thorn in my side Abby is still here. Come with me." Burton hurriedly said and grabbed Christine's elbow. He pulled her away from the offices and towards the hallway that led to the larger creature pens.

"What's your plan?" She asked him while casually jerking her arm back.

"I'll show you," he said grimly as he hurried her along, using his sense of urgency instead of a hand on her elbow. It was creepy walking through the deserted building. Finally he stopped in the feeding room for that nasty raptor that had been captured a few weeks before she had returned.

It was a simple airlock setup that any zoo would be familiar with. The outer door could be locked remotely, keeping the creature out in the yard while fresh food was placed in the room.

"What?" Christine said again crossly, "Why are we here?"

"You weren't working fast enough. I couldn't get enough answers from those offshore accounts or those photographs to get rid of Lester legitimately so my boss insists I just skip to the end. This way I can get rid of all of them at once. No more Connor and his sudden bursts of conscience, no more Abby nagging at me to pour more money into the creatures." He seemed remarkably pleased with himself. "And no more Lester."

Christine felt a chill cross her skin as she realized what he intended to do. She had no choice but to go along with it. He never meant for James's body to not be found. He planned to have it dismembered instead. It was diabolically evil and she felt her stomach lurch.

Masterfully, she hid her reaction. "What do you need me to do?"

"Lure Abby in here and cuff her to those bars. Here." He gave her some hand cuffs he had probably nicked from the armory. "I'm going to get something from my office and bring Lester down. We'll open the outer door and when it's over, as long as we pick the cuffs up, it'll look like a terrible accident."

Desperately, she tried to poke holes in his plan. "What about the cameras?"

"A power surge is scheduled for early this morning. It's going to erase loads of files, including the security footage that hasn't been backed up on a disk yet." It seemed he had thought of everything. Burton looked quite pleased with himself for planning the perfect crime on less than twelve hours notice.

Bastard.

She had to admit, it was a good plan. He might even get away with it. "All right, I'll bring her in here." Christine said agreeably, without betraying any of the true emotions she felt. He fell for her act and smiled at her as he bounded back up to the main part of the building, saying over his shoulder, "Good girl."

She kept her annoyance to herself. That good girl crap was really getting on her nerves.

Christine stood in the hallway and thought frantically. She had to do it. She couldn't warn Abby or Burton would know she was playing him and would just kill her as well. There wasn't a way around it. She took a deep breath and though about the other hard decisions she had to make in her life.

She pulled that aura of confidence and arrogance and sheer power around her like a great big cloak. It wrapped around her like an old friend but as the attitude settled in, it rubbed just a bit against her conscious. Ruthlessly, she squished the little voice that was telling her that this was wrong, _wrong,_ _**wrong**_ and she made her way farther into the menagerie to find Abby.

Trapping Abby was pitifully easy. She was completely absorbed nursing a sick creature and she didn't hesitate when Christine appeared at her elbow with a story about needing to show her something in the new raptor's pen. Abby walked ahead of her into the feeding room. Christine grabbed her wrist and slapped the cuffs on arm. Abby didn't even really have time to squawk in protest before the bigger woman had her muscled up against the bars and clicked the other side on.

Christine didn't say anything to her, nothing she could say would make it better. She lifted Abby's phone from her pocket and left the room, shutting the door firmly on Abby's cursing. Halfway up the hallway James rounded the corner, with his hands in the air. Connor was beside him looking betrayed. James only looked resigned at his fate.

Strutting, behind them both was Burton, with that damned .45 in his hand.

Burton called out when he saw her. "Christine! Just the woman I wanted to see. I trust you took care of Abby?"

She made herself act super casual and ignore Connor's flash of anger and fear at the mention of his girlfriend's name. "She's secure. Just like you told me." Christine smiled cheerfully at the prisoners. "This way, gentlemen." James kept trying to catch her eye and she wouldn't let him. Burton noticed and smirked proudly. She spun on her heels and led them to the room Abby was in.  
>"Against the wall." Burton ordered the prisoners crisply, motioning with the pistol.<p>

Lester didn't move past the doorway. "Or what? You'll shoot us?" he said bitterly. "You're going to kill us anyway."

"But I might kill you very very slowly." Burton countered, "Or I might just shoot darling Abby in a non-fatal place and let you listen to her scream for a while."

Connor went pale at that threat and didn't do anything except put his hands on the bars right next to his furious girlfriend. Christine calmly clicked the cuffs onto his wrists, shackling him up next to Abby and neatly dodging the kick Abby aimed at her.

"It'll be alright, Abby." Connor whispered to her. She was too furious at Christine betraying them to really hear him.

James tried to get her attention when she bound him. A totally inappropriate line about tieing him up came to mind but now really wasn't the time for it. "What the hell are you doing?" He whispered furiously, nearly silently. It was hard to ignore the worry in his eyes but she managed.

"Sorry James," she said to him in a normal tone of voice. "I suppose it had to end this way." Regretfully, she turned away from him to face Burton. "Do you want to tell them all about it or do you just want me to open the outer door?"

He sneered. "Monologue my dastardly plans? I think not. Connor had a lot of it worked out already. Pity he had to suddenly sprout a conscience and ask questions like 'who's going to control it,' and 'what if this technology is abused'." Connor looked more and more appalled as Burton made fun of him in a falsetto voice.

"You'll never finish the device without me!" Connor threatened Burton. Burton laughed, the gun bobbed unpleasantly. "Ha. My people have been following along your every thought. They've leaped ahead of you and they're nearly finished with the device. All the power of the anomalies will be at my fingertips!"

Burton seemed to realize that he was monologuing anyway with especially cheesy dialogue. He cut himself off and got serious, but first, he had one more stone to throw in Connor's direction. "That person I saw Abby with Monday night? It wasn't a bloke at all, it was Christine! For someone who claims to be in love, it's amazing how quick you were to believe she was cheating on you."

They all saw Connor's face go pale as he realized that he had been well and truly played. He squeezed his eyes shut as futile defense from Burton's words.

"Abby I'm sorry!" He pulled vainly on the cuffs. "I never meant for this to happen!"

"I know, Connor, I know." Abby looked from Connor to Christine and opened her mouth, then shut it again at the look from Christine's face. Burton started talking and kept her from saying anything. It seems that Connor wasn't the only one that got played.

"I confess I hadn't expected you lot to suddenly get clever, but no matter." Burton said. "That dinosaur will take care of the problem for me."

Horrified, James, Abby and Connor pulled at their handcuffs, clanking them uselessly. "I do want to know one thing before we close the curtain on this mess." He leveled the gun at James, "Who were you working for?"

James sighed and rattled his cuffs. "I suppose it doesn't matter now. I'll tell you..."

"Who?" Burton demanded instantly.

"Wallace."

"Who's Wallace?" Burton lowered the pistol and asked, confused.

"No, no I tell a lie." James seemed to consider the matter carefully, "It's Gromit. I work for Gromit."

Connor laughed. Burton realised that James was taking the piss and he bristled up accordingly. "No matter. Whoever they are, you don't work for them anymore."

Christine strode around next to Burton. "So I've got the job?"

"Oh yes. You have the job." The traitor assured her with leering smirk.

"James is still alive." Christine looked directly at him, then back at Burton. "I thought you'd be more of a man about it, solving your own problems."

"Oh, but I think I do want to take care of that personally." He leveled the .45 at James's temple. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this."

James looked frantically past him at Christine. "Christine..." His voice trailed off as she only looked at him with amusement dancing in her eyes. She knew he wouldn't beg, he just wouldn't. The appalled expression on his face confirmed it, he was convinced that she had betrayed him.

He focused back on Burton. "Do it then, if you have the guts."

"No last words? Pity." The foul man actually grinned wider as he squeezed the trigger.

**Click**. Burton glanced at the gun puzzled as to the sudden misfire. He pulled the trigger again, futilely. **Click, click, click.**

James figured it out first. They had been here before, after all. "Christy, that was _**not funny**_." He gasped out as he felt his whole body go completely limp with relief.

"Depends on where you're standing," She parroted back at him with a bright, completely out of place, laugh. "I thought it was hilarious." People always did say her sense of humor was a bit twisted. She didn't know what they were talking about, this was hysterical.

It was slowly dawning on Burton that things weren't going exactly according to plan- and Christine was standing out of sight behind him. He spun around and looked directly down the barrel of a snub nosed pistol she had secreted for just such an occasion. He pulled the trigger again, uselessly.

"I took the firing pin out of yours." Christine explained carelessly with a grin that any James Bond villain would be proud to possess. "Leaving me alone in your office was an evil genus fail."

"No." Burton denied her obvious betrayal instantly. "No, we had a deal."

"Yeah... deal's off." She savored the moment. "On the ground. Now."

"You wouldn't dare shoot me." He blustered at her, waving his useless pistol.

"You have no idea what I would dare." Without any hesitation, she shot him twice in the chest at point blank range, what the professionals referred to as double tapping. He was dead before he hit the ground. She merely arched an eyebrow over his dead body, like someone that had just found a regrettable stain on the new white carpet.

The prisoners were stunned at the loud gunshots in the small room and by her her instant response with lethal violence, but as usual Connor recovered his powers of speech first. "Wow." he whispered to Lester. "She's wicked scary. Are you sure she's on our side?"

Lester looked as if he was trying to get his heart to start beating again. "I have no idea."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic." She chided them both as she stepped over beside them. "It's easiest this way anyhow." Smoothly, she pulled a hair pin out of her bun and bent it a little to make a handcuff key. It was the work of an instant to jimmy Lester's cuffs open while he bitched at her about not even warning him.  
>"Oh, don't be such a snot rag!" She snapped while freeing Connor and Abby, "I knew you would be fine. I would not have actually let him shoot you- but if I knew you were going to whine this much I should have let him..." <p>

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Several hours later they returned to his flat. "That was more fun than I've had in a long time! Who knew it was so exhilarating to shoot traitors?" Christine was still running on an adrenaline high, she tossed her purse on the couch and spun around to face James, who was closing the door behind them.

"Are you still grumpy about the whole firing pin thing? It could have been worse, what if I hadn't sabotaged his gun?" She stepped out of her heels and picked them up while James trailed after her into her room, suddenly glad she was his height again and not towering over him.

"I thought I was going to die," he protested. "I thought you really had sided with him." He just couldn't get past this. He'd spent the last two hours running over and over this in his head, the sickening feeling of betrayal in his stomach, the glee in her face as Burton pulled the trigger- and all the time she knew nothing would happen.

It was not not NOT funny.

She rolled her eyes and walked into her room. "Yes. That was the point. As I told everyone, I had to get around behind him. You were the best distraction." Christine shrugged, unrepentantly and suddenly he was standing right in front of her.

"Distraction? I'll give you a distraction." Before he could even think it through he ran his fingers through her long hair to cup the nape of her neck and pull her to him for a bruising kiss. 

He felt her gasp as he brushed her lips, her mouth parted slightly and James slipped his tongue along her soft lips before setting in to thoroughly explore her mouth. She moaned against him, molding her body against his. His arms wrapped around her entirely of their own accord and he felt her knees buckle a moment later and she sagged against him, breathing hard.

"That was a proper distraction." He very smugly whispered in her ear when he finally broke the kiss. "Not encouraging someone to blow my head off."

She pushed him back a step and he went. "What the hell was that about?"

"You kissed me back." He pointed out quickly, with one eye on her hand in case she felt like resorting to violence. It was amazing how very violent she could be if given half a chance to plead self defense.

Instead of slapping him, Christine dropped down to sit on her bed, still neatly made up from this morning. "I did, didn't I?" Since she seemed more surprised than angry, James sat down beside her and slung an arm around her waist.

"You did."

"Why did you do that?"

"I don't know. It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

"Why?"

James decided to go out on a limb, "It could be because you are a very beautiful, very irritating woman that also saved my life tonight." She actually blushed. He reached out and brushed a stray hair off of her face, tucking it back behind her ear.

"So it was a pity kiss?" She seemed disappointed.

"No. I don't pity you. I find myself intrigued by you."

She leaned a bit closer to him, "Intrigued how?"

He tried to brush it off and then abruptly decided not to. "Intriguing like how do you kiss, how far up does that scar under your skirt go." He slid his hand along her leg and started to inch it up, brushing the fabric out of the way, fingers trailing along the scar. He could feel her thigh twitch under his hand.

"Exactly what would make you gasp-" He captured her lips in another kiss and felt her melt against him.

"You're being very forward." Christine murmured against his lips. She sounded amused and hadn't shoved him away again. He took it as a good sign.

He growled and decided to see how much he could get away with. He leaned her back on the bed. "You haven't seen forward yet, Christy." She laughed and welcomed him with her hands tugging on his sides, pulling him on top of her.

She inched backwards until they were both totally on the bed, still kissing and exploring each other with curious hands. She shifted and he settled in like he was planning on staying a while, intent on tasting every inch of skin he could reach.

Christine got his attention, "Wait, wait."

"What?" His hands were busy unfastening all the tiny buttons on her blouse. He was almost done, he had nearly reached her waist. The red lacy bra he had revealed was absolutely stunning, and what they were around-.

"Wait," She grabbed his chin and pulled his face around to hers, "We can't."

"Why not?" He was gobsmacked, "Are you serious?"

She was firm about this. "I'm serious, we have to talk."

"Oh, not the talk." He groaned, but didn't roll off her. His only concession was to stop peeling her out of her clothes. James resigned himself to hearing some variation of 'let's just be friends'. He propped himself up on his elbows and tried desperately not to think about how comfortable he was.

Peevishly he said, "What?"

Christine held him loosely, "We established I'm cheap, not easy. I'm not after a shag-"

"Well, I am. Don't I get a vote? I thought I was going to die tonight." The plaintive tone in his voice made her laugh and he was sorely tempted to rub himself against her warm thigh, just in case she hadn't noticed the state he was in. But that would be extremely juvenile and he refrained.

"You misunderstand, I've got no objection to this-" She gave his shoulders and back a firm caress, stopping with her fingers just under the waistband of his trousers, brushing against his boxers.

"Then why'd you stop me then? I'll go to the store and get something if you're that worried about getting knocked up-"

"It's not that! But that is a concern for later. I was just going to tell you that I need some romance."

He was skeptical. "Romance?"

"Romance." She repeated firmly, "If we're going to do this then we're going to do it right."

"Don't you like me?" He started kissing her neck again slowly. She arched against him and groaned deeply, gripping his skin. It was the most erotic sound he'd ever heard.

She attempted to maintain a serious voice and totally failed, "I mean... I'm... serious."

"You're still talking." He redoubled his efforts at clouding the rational part of her brain. Her breath was coming in little huffs and her legs twined around his waist. He sucked hard on the little sensitive spot he had discovered just beneath her ear.

"Dating," she moaned. "I'm not a quick lay-"

He leaned up enough that she could see the mirth in his eyes, "Darling, it wouldn't be quick."

"That's what I mean!" she protested.

Since she seemed bound and determined to discus this, whatever this was, right now he stopped for a minute. "Fine. Talk."

"I want to date for a while before we hop into bed." The illogical nature of that statement seemed to have escaped her considering her skirt was pushed up to her waist, he was settled possessively right between her thighs, and her blouse was only three buttons away from being totally off.

"Darling, we are in bed and what would you call spending every day together for the last three weeks?" James pointed out a bit desperately.

"We weren't dating," she denied it completely. "We were together through circumstance. I don't want to be just a friend with benefits. For example, you've never used a term of endearment like darling before." She ran one hand through his hair, brushing her fingertips along his scalp. He shuddered and tried to ignore the thought of her exploring the rest of him with the intensity she was devoting to his hair. Or the intensity she devoted to anything, really, that caught her interest.

"We've been under surveillance." He protested and hated how breathless he sounded. "That would have tipped him off wouldn't it? I couldn't very well fight with you publicly and then call you darling or sweetheart in private. You want to do the whole boyfriend, girlfriend thing?"

"Yes."

"We're too old for that, dating at our age? I'll romance you but I draw the line at sitting next to you in the lunch room and making goo-goo eyes at you."

She ignored his sarcasm. "How do you plan to romance me?"

"Dinner. Flowers. Theatre. Whatever you want, Christine, you're driving me mad again." He groaned against her neck and nipped at the her skin, smug that she was just as breathless as he was.

"It isn't about just stuff." She argued back even as she arched into his mouth.

It was the emotional 'feelings' talk. Why did woman want to talk about this at the absolute worst moments? If she wanted feelings then he'd give her feelings. He stopped trailing his mouth up and down her neck. "Fine. You are a beautiful, clever, brilliant woman and I think I've fallen in love with you."

Her expression softened remarkably. "Really? Do you really mean that?"

"I wouldn't have said it if I didn't." He took a deep breath and kept talking, hoping to convince her that he was sincere and not just trying to get laid, "For the last few weeks I've looked forward to the weekend because I get to spend it with you, instead of just away from everyone else. That's never happened to me before." He started kissing her again. "I love my privacy, but you...you I want near me. All the time."

She thought about it for a second. "That's good enough." She started tugging at his shirt, pulling it out of his trousers. "Hey..."

"What is it now?" He couldn't believe she still wanted to talk. He admitted that he loved her. What more could she want? James pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at her. She seemed... unsure of herself. She was never unsure, ever. Just a few hours ago he had watched her smash Burton like a bug. He waited patiently for her to work out whatever it was chasing around in her mind.

She hesitated before kissing him quickly and murmuring against his lips so softly he could barely hear it, "I'm quite fond of you too."

That gave him momentary pause as he chewed it over. "Quite fond? Only quite fond? I admitted I love you."

Her eyes narrowed and he didn't realise what she was about until she tightened her legs around his waist and flipped them, so she was peering down at him. "Don't push it."

He laughted. He couldn't help it and after a few seconds she joined in. Christine leaned down and planted a quick kiss on his neck before whispering confidently, "I think we're going to fine, James." 

THE END

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I am sorry it took me so long to write the last chapter and never fear, I'm working on the end of Foundling next.


End file.
